NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:

Vic got the ball rolling on the issue of world population growth last week, with a concluding shot at how increasing population is affecting us here in Huntington Beach. We don’t have to look any further than the newly approved Ripcurl project that will be built at the southeast corner of Gothard Street and Center Avenue to see some of the downside to population growth.

First, let’s review the population issue. We don’t think a world population increase of 1% a year is acceptable. The nearly 7 billion people on this planet take up too much space and use too many resources. We are already seeing mass starvation and inadequate access to clean drinking water for nearly a third of the people on the planet.

Sure, resources could be distributed better, but the bottom line is there are too many people. We don’t need to be growing at 1%, or even 0.1%. We need to reduce world population to about two-thirds or even half its present size if we’re to live sustainably. The folks at Negative Population Growth suggest we go even further than that, reducing world population to 1.5 billion to 2 billion in order to live sustainably.

If we don’t reduce population voluntarily, starvation, wars or pandemics will take care of the situation for us. It’s inevitable that something will happen. No population of any kind can expand indefinitely.

As the population grows uncomfortably large elsewhere, those who are able to will leave. They’ll go someplace where the living is easier. If we build more housing, the burgeoning population will eventually fill it. And so the City Council, in its infinite wisdom, approved the Ripcurl housing project by a 6-1 vote. Only Jill Hardy voted against it.

This project is six stories of apartments, 440 of them, with 10,000 square feet of retail use. All on a mere 3.8 acres. That will be 100 housing units per acre, about four times what the city normally allows. And that’s just the start.

Next in line to get approved was the Village at Bella Terra, with 45 units per acre in yet another six-story building. That will go in where the old empty Levitz building sits. City code allows for only four-story buildings in that area. So this is yet another project that was allowed a variance despite being denser and higher than code allows. More of these megaplexes are planned for Beach Boulevard and Edinger Avenue. Come on, isn’t traffic bad enough as it is? Don’t we already have enough air pollution?

Vic tells me that there is another side to this story. He speculates environmentalist Debbie Cook voted for the project because the choice is that either Orange County grows up or it grows out. There is no more “out” in Huntington Beach, so that means more development of south Orange County and more development of the foothills. Neither of those is good for the environment. Vic says building existing cities up instead of out can cut down on commute distances. And it can help preserve habitat.

But I have to ask if those are our only choices. Why do we have to keep on building? In theory it’s because the population keeps growing and growing and growing. But in fact, it’s the profit motive that drives construction of new housing.

I’m not saying that making money is a bad thing. I just think the human population has grown enough. I think it’s time to shrink.

Humans need open space. We need some semblance of a natural world for our well-being and our peace of mind. Ideally, all the small towns in Orange County would have purchased greenbelts around their communities, strips of protected native landscape to separate one town from another. But if we build on all of the remaining land, there will be nothing left for wildlife, nothing left on which to grow food for our ever-increasing population, and nothing left for the open space that humans need to stay emotionally healthy.

Vic would say that’s why we need higher-density housing so we can preserve open space in the wildlands. Why should Huntington Beach become a pint-sized version of Long Beach and Los Angeles?

This is but one reason why I wish we had an environmentally minded majority on the council once again. But we don’t. So get used to more traffic, air pollution, noise and increasingly long lines in stores.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com.