Growth vs. No-Growth Debate by Los Angeles Officials

I was quite interested in Fulton’s article.

Bradley is unfortunate in being one of the first politicians to be caught between the millstones of “growth” and “no growth.” Human nature being what it is, the same people who find it impossible to control their breeding, which would be the simple solution, find it very easy to endorse “no growth” which affects those other than themselves. It is similar to a thought I have often expressed in jest--that there is nothing wrong with Southern California that making every person who arrived here after 1938 return to his previous place of residence wouldn’t cure. By an odd coincidence I moved here in 1938.

Seriously, there is only one way to control growth, and that is to eliminate new sewer and water connections; not reduce, but eliminate them. This will be very difficult to accomplish considering the money that developers contribute to the campaigns of all politicians, but there really is no alternative. Southern California is a finite space, it can be occupied by only so many persons. We have already passed the limits which good sense would have allowed and face the choice of cutting the population growth off now, or waiting until a vast number of us are living in utter misery. We have delayed practical measures to solve this problem until we are left with only one answer, zero population growth.

WENDELL PHILLIPS

Green Valley Lake