Administration’s Energy Policy

Your March 31 edition featured a front-page article (“MWD’s Thirst for New Customers Continues”) and an editorial (“Don’t Let Energy Policy Run Out of Steam”) that need to be interpreted in tandem. California has one underlying problem: We have too many people using up our few natural resources--water, oil, open space and clean air.

Our population has increased approximately 50% in the last two decades. And all of our elected and bureaucratic officials have but one response--build more, plan for still more growth, tax and develop. We plunge ahead with 19th-Century economic policies that promise ever-increasing financial rewards as long as we can continue to exploit and expand.

But what has that progress yielded? Clogged transportation arteries, inner-city disintegration, yellow skies, poisoned waters, a drug-and-crime-infested climate and increasing psychological congestion. The problem is that we live in a limited physical environment with finite material resources.

Once we citizen-voters accept this reality, we can elect leaders who no longer rely on the same bankrupt rhetoric of growth and development. We need men and women in office who have the courage and vision to use tax disincentives, economic restraint and a steady-state philosophy to lead us into the 21st Century.

DONALD N. WOOD

Calabasas