What the hell is an extinction vortex? The article refuses to define it, despite scare-quoting the term itself..
>“Individual lions face horrible deaths from car collisions or rat poison, while their populations become increasingly isolated and inbred in ever-shrinking islands of habitat hemmed by freeways and sprawl.”
Is this it? It doesn't really fit the name that well..
> Mountain lions as a species are not threatened in California, but a petition submitted Tuesday to the state Fish and Game Commission argues that six isolated and genetically distinct cougar clans from Santa Cruz to the U.S.-Mexico border comprise a subpopulation that is threatened by extinction.
I understand it lacks the 'We define extinction vortex as...' preamble, but you can easily infer it.
When a population is isolated or bottlenecked, there reaches an event horizon where inbreeding causes too manty defects for the population to survive even if one were to curb outside predation/killing. The article points several times to the increasing isolation of the populations and the threats that giving them protected status would require development to take isolation of population in care when developing.
The article itself admits the unusualness of the term (unusual to the expected audience, anyways), by wrapping it in scare quotes.
The article fails to directly define the term, and the indirect definitions do not point to anything that might constitute a “vortex”:
>The article points several times to the increasing isolation of the populations and the threats that giving them protected status would require development to take isolation of population in care when developing.
Which only implies the vortex, or feedback loop, if you already know the term and meaning, but the article does not expect you to know it..!
Isolation alone hardly reads as an evolutionary feedback loop... unless you already know that isolation creates an evolutionary feedback loop
That still just sounds like regular extinction to me. "Event horizon" or some other "cliff" type of nomenclature is fair too in light of the inbreeding effect of very small populations. But "extinction vortex" sounds like they wanted to pick a scary sounding word for hype.
For "vortex" to actually be fitting I'd expect some kind of circular process: perhaps a feedback loop, wherein some process is causing extinction which increasingly leads to more extinction. Like how melting ice leads to warming, which leads to more melting ice, etc, might be fair to call a "warming vortex".
> For "vortex" to actually be fitting I'd expect some kind of circular process: perhaps a feedback loop, wherein some process is causing extinction which increasingly leads to more extinction.
That is indeed what it means. Per Wikipedia: "[The extinction vortex model] shows the events that ultimately lead small populations to become increasingly more vulnerable as they spiral toward extinction."
"Extinction vortex" and "polar vortex" are both well-defined scientific terms. The media could stand to define them better, but they're generally used correctly.
I lived in California my whole life before moving to Arizona about twenty years ago. I saw a mountain lion in Carlsbad California right before we moved. It was standing next busy College Avenue waiting for a break in traffic, then trotted across the street. Now living in the mountains of Central Arizona, there is more potential for seeing them. We have had tracks under our deck and very early in the morning I saw one on the street two blocks from our house. Mountain lions can pose a real threat to small children, so literally, pick up your kids with you if you see a mountain close by.
re: stopping development in some areas in California: that sounds like a good idea in general, and in this case I believe that protecting some areas of natural habitat is probably a good idea.
> Mountain lions can pose a real threat to small children, so literally, pick up your kids with you if you see a mountain close by.
While not awful advice, it's also vastly overblowing the true (nonexistent) danger mountain lions pose.
Mountain lions are one of the smallest threats imaginable to anyone, small children included. 99.99% of people will never ever ever even be fortunate enough to see a mountain lion in the wild.
If you do see a mountain lion up close, it's because either you surprised it (extremely unlikely) or because it wants you to see it (slightly less likely). If you and a kid are being hunted by a mountain lion (unbelievably unlikely) you'll likely never see it until it's too late.
Do not let anyone ever tell you that mountain lions pose any kind of real threat to humans. Mountain lions are responsible for ones of attacks on humans over a period of years, if not decades. It'd be like saying to watch out for the threat of getting hit by lightning while winning the lottery.
Mountain Lions are like Sharks of the land. What I mean by that is that their danger is wildly overblown in movies and news.
Statistically speaking, attacks from both animals are insanely rare.
For example, there have only been 25 deaths from Mountain Lions in North America since we began recording these in the 1800s.
By comparison, fatal shark attacks are over 6 times more likely to occur with about 1 shark attack in North America per year on average.
So it is interesting that whenever we go hiking in the woods or see a mountain lion cross the street, the news reports it and everyone loses their minds. Dying to a mountain lion is one of the rarest ways to die from a statistical perspective. There are rare diseases that you have never heard of that are more likely to kill you.
Every time we put our toe in the water people fear shark attacks. A rogue swell is more likely to capsize your boat than for you to be attacked by a shark, yet some people live in fear of it.
Also if you have hiked any considerable amount in the Rocky Mountains or Sierra Nevada mountain ranges than you have almost certainly had a Mountain Lion watch you, probably several times. Despite the fact, you have never seen it.
Bears are another one. I have encountered so many bears in the wild that I seriously don't even have a count for it anymore. I have stumbled on them less than 100 feet away from me on several occasions and guess what happens... they look me square in the eyes and then calmly turn around and walk away. Sometimes they run away, but they have no interest in killing me. I have never had one approach me once we became aware of the presence of each other.
I hike and camp A LOT, and I have NEVER seen a mountain lion in the wild, despite living in areas of their prime habitat where we know they live. I have seen virtually every other native large animal species on multiple occasions. But I have never seen a mountain lion in the wild. But I can guarantee you that they have seen me several times. That is what is scary about mountain lions. If you ever did get attacked, it would be over before you knew what was happening.
I have seen mountain lions cross the road twice in Park City, UT now. I have seen them in zoos as well. But just never seen one in the wild. Despite spending enough time to encounter bears on 20+ occasions.
Not a bad comparison, but you're overlooking one big difference: There are many more sharks than there are mountain lions.
If you're swimming at any beach in Florida (for example) you are likely to be within 20' of a shark at all times. At some points in the year you will be near dozens if not hundreds of sharks:
I live in CA near Santa Cruz and we have had mountain lions in our backyard.
I've seen them close up and was not scared for the reasons you mentioned, it wanted to be seen. I had a slightly scarier incident where I was hissed at from thick bushes by a mountain lion that I couldn't see, but I left and the lion did not follow.
It's extremely common in our area for lions to attack and kill small dogs and livestock. For that reason, there aren't many people that appreciate preserving these animals even though there have been no recorded attacks on humans in our area.
Bears used to be common in the area too, but were hunted to extinction hundreds of years ago and the ecosystem adapted and survived.
If lions weren't here there are lots of people who would definitely hunt to keep the population down.
I think people overestimate the danger of lions to people, but also overestimate the environmental impact if they left.
But overall I know many people who have seen lions up close or been followed while hiking and everyone ended up being safe.
Yeah, I've seen one while trail running in Oregon. While scary (came around a blind turn before sunrise and it was about 20' away), it clearly wanted nothing to do with me. Just stopped, looked at me, and wandered off the trail. One of the most memorable wildlife encounters I've had in my life.
By survived, I mean the ecosystem as a whole rebalanced and survived.
I think there's this notion of taking any predator or apex animal out of an ecosystem can cause it to collapse. But early humans hunted many animals to extinctions, at least regionally, and those ecosystems may have changed, but I don't know of any that became inhospitable or void of life as a result.
I'm sure there was some environmental impact of hunting bears to extinction in Central CA, I'm just not aware of it and haven't heard of anyone proposing that we reintroduce them.
Sierra Nevada local here. There are very few events in my life that have been more emotional than the time I saw a mountain lion dead on the side of I80. I don't agree with the article's scare tactics, but I'm all for taking some action. I've always felt that tunneling (or even just covering) the freeways would be an obvious win for the Sierras. It would not only allow for wildlife to safely exist, but also would save the cost of snow removal and protect the freeways from the extreme thaw-freeze cycles and trucks with chains that force the freeway to be resurfaced every few years.
Can any Californian say something about the relative frequency of the various names for this species?
I'd never heard the term "mountain lion" until recently (I think I first encountered it in a story by Annie Proulx) though I've known the word "puma" since the 1970s. Apparently they're also known as "cougar" or "catamount". I probably came across the term "cougar" some time this century, and the term "catamount" a few minutes ago.
Everyone I know around here calls them mountain lions. I've heard cougar occasionally, but that word conflicts with other relevant topics in Los Angeles ...
I live in LA and grew up in Florida. Mountain lion is almost exclusively said out here. Back in Florida, it seemed like a mix between cougar and mountain lion, with some people saying puma. I think I've only heard an Appalachian Mountain hipster use the term catamount in conversation. I think there's a college sports team whose nickname is the catamounts.
Click bait language aside, this is an interesting question. How much should we seek to preserve a particular species in a particular place? Is it alright to wipe out a species in one area _because_ they exist somewhere else? It seems totally possible we want to do this, though it isn't the way we usually think about it.
My favorite OSX version and my favorite animal. It's an incredibly agile animal. The animals are taking their toll from the insatible greediness of wild capitalism.
California is full of the worst kinds of "crony capitalism" (that is, regulatory capture, a feature and not a bug of capitalism unfortunately), what do you mean?
I don't think that's an even remotely accurate statement of California. I think the problem is precisely the opposite--the 1960s and 1970s brought a raft of political and legal changes in California in response to crony capitalism. The irony is that in some respects, at least, the cure was worse than the disease.
In general the changes emphasized community involvement and participation in the application and enforcement of policy. But they arguably made this too easy. Take the California Environment Quality Act (CEQA), for example. Under CEQA anyone can challenge a development project regardless of the direct effect on them, and there are effectively no repercussions for abusing this.
San Francisco is a microcosm of the statewide problem. Almost everything the city does, from infrastructure projects to permit approvals, requires "community input", which activists effectively use to drag out deliberations on even minor matters for years. The approval process for the biggest changes in the city, such as the towers downtown and the Mission Bay development projects, began in the 1990s. Notably that was before the two dotcom bubbles and the housing crisis made everybody city planning experts and community activists. Such large scale development would be strangled at birth by activists today even though they're merely replacing dirty industrial sites and adding net housing (as opposed to the pre-1980s projects that literally razed communities and kicked people out onto the streets--e.g. the I-Hotel[1]).
So I think the problem isn't crony capitalism--not generally. I think a better description of this is mob rule reflecting sanctimonious populism. Some companies have become quite adept at staying under the radar--not to avoid the law, but to avoid the attention of activists and communities.[2] But I don't think we should confuse that sort of bureaucratic sophistication with cronyism, graft, rule avoidance, and similar types of behavior. California isn't even remotely comparable to states like New Jersey, Illinois, or Alabama in this regard; California companies are angelic by comparison.
[2] Political leaders do this too for entirely pure-of-heart reasons. It's little known that the long-term plan for the Great Highway along the west coast of SF is for it to be demolished. Rather than attempting to mitigate coastal erosion along the southern end, they're simply going to close it. They "schemed" with California officials and the Federal government (who controls the beach and, I think, the technically the highway itself) to develop an environmental plan to store the habitat. This nominally comports with the express wishes of California and San Francisco voters. But if people actually caught wind of this everybody would freak out because the Great Highway is now heavily trafficked, especially during commute hours. So AFAICT there's a "conspiracy" by city politicians, environmentalists, and the Feds to formalize and set into the motion the long-term plan before anyone notices to effectively challenge it.
You would think... First time I went there I had a version of the Paris Syndrome[1]. I was expecting beautiful, clean, and preserved nature and what I saw was oil refineries on the ocean (chevron in el segundo) water so filled with bacteria after it rains you will get hepatitis if you go in it, extreme vehicle pollution, oil drilling in the city [2]!
Granted I still like it there, but the illusion of California being an eco-friendly place was completely shot.
> In addition, large-scale residential and commercial development could be prohibited or limited in mountain lion habitats within a region covering roughly a third of the state.
It seems like something has to give. In particular, we can't have reasonable housing prices, a healthy mountain lion habitat and increased immigration and population (especially in California). Those three things are directly at odds with each other.
I don't know what the answer is, but it seems likely that mountain lions will end up as the lowest priority.
> Arcology, a portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology", is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated, ecologically low-impact human habitats.
> The term was coined in 1969 by architect Paolo Soleri, who believed that a completed arcology would provide space for a variety of residential, commercial, and agricultural facilities while minimizing individual human environmental impact. These structures have been largely hypothetical, as no arcology, even one envisioned by Soleri himself, has yet been built.
Emphasis added. We know what to do, the question is how do we motivate enough people to do it.
I doubt reasonable housing prices will come with more development, especially in California. That's just the tag-line to get approved so you can start bilking renters/home owners. In this case, I'm for preserving the non-human entities.
Actually, housing seems to be the lowest priority. No one is building west of 280 (for a number of reasons, including environmental ones). Attempts to build up instead of expand are thwarted by NIMBYs. They’ll complain about the streets being filled with parked cars (because 10 people live in a house) while railing against building large residential apartments in downtown areas because of “lack of infrastructure.” Infrastructure which they also oppose.
We can “easily” have all three things you’ve suggested there, but a huge swathe of the public seems to want their personal neck of the Bay Area to be as it was in 1973.
Nit pik: there's a ton of development west of I-280. Just look at Google Maps. You may have in mind the Rancho Corral de Tierra nature preserve (https://www.nps.gov/goga/rcdt-factsheet.htm), which abuts I-280 for a long section at the north of the peninsula. But on the other side of that, especially along the coast, is significant development. Rancho Corral seems only loosely connected to other preserves, and in general the entire peninsula has significant development, just not very dense or obvious from the highway--on Google Maps be sure to zoom in so you can see the little communities and houses scattered around the lower-half of the peninsula, which is presumably why all those nature preserves cannot be merged. So the movement of animals from further south along the Santa Cruz Mountains is probably relatively restricted. That doesn't prevent mountain lions from making their way near and even into San Francisco, but in no way should the situation diminish concern for habit loss.
What the hell is an extinction vortex? The article refuses to define it, despite scare-quoting the term itself..
>“Individual lions face horrible deaths from car collisions or rat poison, while their populations become increasingly isolated and inbred in ever-shrinking islands of habitat hemmed by freeways and sprawl.”
Is this it? It doesn't really fit the name that well..
I found this WWW page with the Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_vortex
It's a boundary below which specific feedback mechanisms accelerate extinction, fragmentation of populations being one condition.
Second paragraph defines it:
> Mountain lions as a species are not threatened in California, but a petition submitted Tuesday to the state Fish and Game Commission argues that six isolated and genetically distinct cougar clans from Santa Cruz to the U.S.-Mexico border comprise a subpopulation that is threatened by extinction.
I understand it lacks the 'We define extinction vortex as...' preamble, but you can easily infer it.
But how is "threatened by extinction" an "extinction vortex"?
When a population is isolated or bottlenecked, there reaches an event horizon where inbreeding causes too manty defects for the population to survive even if one were to curb outside predation/killing. The article points several times to the increasing isolation of the populations and the threats that giving them protected status would require development to take isolation of population in care when developing.
The article itself admits the unusualness of the term (unusual to the expected audience, anyways), by wrapping it in scare quotes.
The article fails to directly define the term, and the indirect definitions do not point to anything that might constitute a “vortex”:
>The article points several times to the increasing isolation of the populations and the threats that giving them protected status would require development to take isolation of population in care when developing.
Which only implies the vortex, or feedback loop, if you already know the term and meaning, but the article does not expect you to know it..!
Isolation alone hardly reads as an evolutionary feedback loop... unless you already know that isolation creates an evolutionary feedback loop
That still just sounds like regular extinction to me. "Event horizon" or some other "cliff" type of nomenclature is fair too in light of the inbreeding effect of very small populations. But "extinction vortex" sounds like they wanted to pick a scary sounding word for hype.
For "vortex" to actually be fitting I'd expect some kind of circular process: perhaps a feedback loop, wherein some process is causing extinction which increasingly leads to more extinction. Like how melting ice leads to warming, which leads to more melting ice, etc, might be fair to call a "warming vortex".
If you look at the Wikipedia article, the term 'extinction vortex' has been used since the mid-80s.
It might interest you to know that there is an analogy between black holes and vortexes, as the latter are used as physical models of the former: https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys4151#affil-auth
> For "vortex" to actually be fitting I'd expect some kind of circular process: perhaps a feedback loop, wherein some process is causing extinction which increasingly leads to more extinction.
That is indeed what it means. Per Wikipedia: "[The extinction vortex model] shows the events that ultimately lead small populations to become increasingly more vulnerable as they spiral toward extinction."
If only semantics could prevent animals from going extinct.
I took it as a scary-sounding version of "downward spiral".
Related headline: Journalist uses 'dubious tactics' in headline to 'clickfarm' population.
I'm truly tired of this media tactic to create/hijack curiosity (IE "wtf is a 'polar vortex'") and/or scare quotes to generate page views.
"Extinction vortex" and "polar vortex" are both well-defined scientific terms. The media could stand to define them better, but they're generally used correctly.
I lived in California my whole life before moving to Arizona about twenty years ago. I saw a mountain lion in Carlsbad California right before we moved. It was standing next busy College Avenue waiting for a break in traffic, then trotted across the street. Now living in the mountains of Central Arizona, there is more potential for seeing them. We have had tracks under our deck and very early in the morning I saw one on the street two blocks from our house. Mountain lions can pose a real threat to small children, so literally, pick up your kids with you if you see a mountain close by.
re: stopping development in some areas in California: that sounds like a good idea in general, and in this case I believe that protecting some areas of natural habitat is probably a good idea.
> Mountain lions can pose a real threat to small children, so literally, pick up your kids with you if you see a mountain close by.
While not awful advice, it's also vastly overblowing the true (nonexistent) danger mountain lions pose.
Mountain lions are one of the smallest threats imaginable to anyone, small children included. 99.99% of people will never ever ever even be fortunate enough to see a mountain lion in the wild.
If you do see a mountain lion up close, it's because either you surprised it (extremely unlikely) or because it wants you to see it (slightly less likely). If you and a kid are being hunted by a mountain lion (unbelievably unlikely) you'll likely never see it until it's too late.
Do not let anyone ever tell you that mountain lions pose any kind of real threat to humans. Mountain lions are responsible for ones of attacks on humans over a period of years, if not decades. It'd be like saying to watch out for the threat of getting hit by lightning while winning the lottery.
Mountain Lions are like Sharks of the land. What I mean by that is that their danger is wildly overblown in movies and news.
Statistically speaking, attacks from both animals are insanely rare.
For example, there have only been 25 deaths from Mountain Lions in North America since we began recording these in the 1800s.
By comparison, fatal shark attacks are over 6 times more likely to occur with about 1 shark attack in North America per year on average.
So it is interesting that whenever we go hiking in the woods or see a mountain lion cross the street, the news reports it and everyone loses their minds. Dying to a mountain lion is one of the rarest ways to die from a statistical perspective. There are rare diseases that you have never heard of that are more likely to kill you.
Every time we put our toe in the water people fear shark attacks. A rogue swell is more likely to capsize your boat than for you to be attacked by a shark, yet some people live in fear of it.
Also if you have hiked any considerable amount in the Rocky Mountains or Sierra Nevada mountain ranges than you have almost certainly had a Mountain Lion watch you, probably several times. Despite the fact, you have never seen it.
Bears are another one. I have encountered so many bears in the wild that I seriously don't even have a count for it anymore. I have stumbled on them less than 100 feet away from me on several occasions and guess what happens... they look me square in the eyes and then calmly turn around and walk away. Sometimes they run away, but they have no interest in killing me. I have never had one approach me once we became aware of the presence of each other.
I hike and camp A LOT, and I have NEVER seen a mountain lion in the wild, despite living in areas of their prime habitat where we know they live. I have seen virtually every other native large animal species on multiple occasions. But I have never seen a mountain lion in the wild. But I can guarantee you that they have seen me several times. That is what is scary about mountain lions. If you ever did get attacked, it would be over before you knew what was happening.
I have seen mountain lions cross the road twice in Park City, UT now. I have seen them in zoos as well. But just never seen one in the wild. Despite spending enough time to encounter bears on 20+ occasions.
Not a bad comparison, but you're overlooking one big difference: There are many more sharks than there are mountain lions.
If you're swimming at any beach in Florida (for example) you are likely to be within 20' of a shark at all times. At some points in the year you will be near dozens if not hundreds of sharks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyHUr-2_Ets
I have flown in a Cessna low over very popular beaches and there are so many sharks visible that it gets boring to count them.
I live in CA near Santa Cruz and we have had mountain lions in our backyard.
I've seen them close up and was not scared for the reasons you mentioned, it wanted to be seen. I had a slightly scarier incident where I was hissed at from thick bushes by a mountain lion that I couldn't see, but I left and the lion did not follow.
It's extremely common in our area for lions to attack and kill small dogs and livestock. For that reason, there aren't many people that appreciate preserving these animals even though there have been no recorded attacks on humans in our area.
Bears used to be common in the area too, but were hunted to extinction hundreds of years ago and the ecosystem adapted and survived.
If lions weren't here there are lots of people who would definitely hunt to keep the population down.
I think people overestimate the danger of lions to people, but also overestimate the environmental impact if they left.
But overall I know many people who have seen lions up close or been followed while hiking and everyone ended up being safe.
Yeah, I've seen one while trail running in Oregon. While scary (came around a blind turn before sunrise and it was about 20' away), it clearly wanted nothing to do with me. Just stopped, looked at me, and wandered off the trail. One of the most memorable wildlife encounters I've had in my life.
>Bears used to be common in the area too, but were hunted to extinction hundreds of years ago and the ecosystem adapted and survived.
I think we have different definitions of survived... The bears certain didn't, and that to me is an extraordinarily terrible environmental impact.
By survived, I mean the ecosystem as a whole rebalanced and survived.
I think there's this notion of taking any predator or apex animal out of an ecosystem can cause it to collapse. But early humans hunted many animals to extinctions, at least regionally, and those ecosystems may have changed, but I don't know of any that became inhospitable or void of life as a result.
I'm sure there was some environmental impact of hunting bears to extinction in Central CA, I'm just not aware of it and haven't heard of anyone proposing that we reintroduce them.
Sierra Nevada local here. There are very few events in my life that have been more emotional than the time I saw a mountain lion dead on the side of I80. I don't agree with the article's scare tactics, but I'm all for taking some action. I've always felt that tunneling (or even just covering) the freeways would be an obvious win for the Sierras. It would not only allow for wildlife to safely exist, but also would save the cost of snow removal and protect the freeways from the extreme thaw-freeze cycles and trucks with chains that force the freeway to be resurfaced every few years.
Can any Californian say something about the relative frequency of the various names for this species?
I'd never heard the term "mountain lion" until recently (I think I first encountered it in a story by Annie Proulx) though I've known the word "puma" since the 1970s. Apparently they're also known as "cougar" or "catamount". I probably came across the term "cougar" some time this century, and the term "catamount" a few minutes ago.
Everyone I know around here calls them mountain lions. I've heard cougar occasionally, but that word conflicts with other relevant topics in Los Angeles ...
I live in LA and grew up in Florida. Mountain lion is almost exclusively said out here. Back in Florida, it seemed like a mix between cougar and mountain lion, with some people saying puma. I think I've only heard an Appalachian Mountain hipster use the term catamount in conversation. I think there's a college sports team whose nickname is the catamounts.
Not to be confused with the big Florida cat which is the panther.
In bay area, we call them mountain lions. Because this is what park warning signs call them.
Sierra Nevadas pretty much exclusively use mountain lion.
I blame Apple's naming scheme for OS X for the sudden diversity of big cat names.
Is Apple donating to support the (real) mountain lion?
Click bait language aside, this is an interesting question. How much should we seek to preserve a particular species in a particular place? Is it alright to wipe out a species in one area _because_ they exist somewhere else? It seems totally possible we want to do this, though it isn't the way we usually think about it.
Is there a proper blessing for the mountain lion?
My favorite OSX version and my favorite animal. It's an incredibly agile animal. The animals are taking their toll from the insatible greediness of wild capitalism.
In California, of all places!
California is full of the worst kinds of "crony capitalism" (that is, regulatory capture, a feature and not a bug of capitalism unfortunately), what do you mean?
I don't think that's an even remotely accurate statement of California. I think the problem is precisely the opposite--the 1960s and 1970s brought a raft of political and legal changes in California in response to crony capitalism. The irony is that in some respects, at least, the cure was worse than the disease.
In general the changes emphasized community involvement and participation in the application and enforcement of policy. But they arguably made this too easy. Take the California Environment Quality Act (CEQA), for example. Under CEQA anyone can challenge a development project regardless of the direct effect on them, and there are effectively no repercussions for abusing this.
San Francisco is a microcosm of the statewide problem. Almost everything the city does, from infrastructure projects to permit approvals, requires "community input", which activists effectively use to drag out deliberations on even minor matters for years. The approval process for the biggest changes in the city, such as the towers downtown and the Mission Bay development projects, began in the 1990s. Notably that was before the two dotcom bubbles and the housing crisis made everybody city planning experts and community activists. Such large scale development would be strangled at birth by activists today even though they're merely replacing dirty industrial sites and adding net housing (as opposed to the pre-1980s projects that literally razed communities and kicked people out onto the streets--e.g. the I-Hotel[1]).
So I think the problem isn't crony capitalism--not generally. I think a better description of this is mob rule reflecting sanctimonious populism. Some companies have become quite adept at staying under the radar--not to avoid the law, but to avoid the attention of activists and communities.[2] But I don't think we should confuse that sort of bureaucratic sophistication with cronyism, graft, rule avoidance, and similar types of behavior. California isn't even remotely comparable to states like New Jersey, Illinois, or Alabama in this regard; California companies are angelic by comparison.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Hotel_(San_Franc...
[2] Political leaders do this too for entirely pure-of-heart reasons. It's little known that the long-term plan for the Great Highway along the west coast of SF is for it to be demolished. Rather than attempting to mitigate coastal erosion along the southern end, they're simply going to close it. They "schemed" with California officials and the Federal government (who controls the beach and, I think, the technically the highway itself) to develop an environmental plan to store the habitat. This nominally comports with the express wishes of California and San Francisco voters. But if people actually caught wind of this everybody would freak out because the Great Highway is now heavily trafficked, especially during commute hours. So AFAICT there's a "conspiracy" by city politicians, environmentalists, and the Feds to formalize and set into the motion the long-term plan before anyone notices to effectively challenge it.
Well put. Talk to us about Caltrain DTX and SF Planning's holding of that project hostage in their quest to demolish the I-280 from Mariposa north.
It just seemed to me that out of the entire United States, California was the state with the best environmentally conscious lawmakers out there.
You would think... First time I went there I had a version of the Paris Syndrome[1]. I was expecting beautiful, clean, and preserved nature and what I saw was oil refineries on the ocean (chevron in el segundo) water so filled with bacteria after it rains you will get hepatitis if you go in it, extreme vehicle pollution, oil drilling in the city [2]!
Granted I still like it there, but the illusion of California being an eco-friendly place was completely shot.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome [2] https://la.curbed.com/maps/oil-los-angeles-drill-sites-offsh...
> regulatory capture, a feature and not a bug of capitalism unfortunately
That seems pretty uncharitable. Would you agree that mass murder is a 'feature and not a bug' of communism?
The fact that you're aware of 'crony capitalism' would otherwise imply that you're aware that the cronyism is not considered a feature.
I mean deforestation devitalization denaturalization devastation of nature of any kind for any purpose whether for capitalism or some other thingism.
> The animals are taking their toll from the insatible greediness of wild capitalism.
When all you have is a hammer...
Not sure if you're trying to link OSX and capitalism there.
No. The Lion and M.Lion OSX are really good. Maybe the best I can link are the BSD and some craftmanship on top of it.
> In addition, large-scale residential and commercial development could be prohibited or limited in mountain lion habitats within a region covering roughly a third of the state.
It seems like something has to give. In particular, we can't have reasonable housing prices, a healthy mountain lion habitat and increased immigration and population (especially in California). Those three things are directly at odds with each other.
I don't know what the answer is, but it seems likely that mountain lions will end up as the lowest priority.
I've heard from other californians elsewhere in HN that issues with housing is from lack of density, not lack of housing space.
We could try stacking living spaces on top of each other in the places most people want to live.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology
> Arcology, a portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology", is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated, ecologically low-impact human habitats.
> The term was coined in 1969 by architect Paolo Soleri, who believed that a completed arcology would provide space for a variety of residential, commercial, and agricultural facilities while minimizing individual human environmental impact. These structures have been largely hypothetical, as no arcology, even one envisioned by Soleri himself, has yet been built.
Emphasis added. We know what to do, the question is how do we motivate enough people to do it.
I doubt reasonable housing prices will come with more development, especially in California. That's just the tag-line to get approved so you can start bilking renters/home owners. In this case, I'm for preserving the non-human entities.
Actually, housing seems to be the lowest priority. No one is building west of 280 (for a number of reasons, including environmental ones). Attempts to build up instead of expand are thwarted by NIMBYs. They’ll complain about the streets being filled with parked cars (because 10 people live in a house) while railing against building large residential apartments in downtown areas because of “lack of infrastructure.” Infrastructure which they also oppose.
We can “easily” have all three things you’ve suggested there, but a huge swathe of the public seems to want their personal neck of the Bay Area to be as it was in 1973.
Nit pik: there's a ton of development west of I-280. Just look at Google Maps. You may have in mind the Rancho Corral de Tierra nature preserve (https://www.nps.gov/goga/rcdt-factsheet.htm), which abuts I-280 for a long section at the north of the peninsula. But on the other side of that, especially along the coast, is significant development. Rancho Corral seems only loosely connected to other preserves, and in general the entire peninsula has significant development, just not very dense or obvious from the highway--on Google Maps be sure to zoom in so you can see the little communities and houses scattered around the lower-half of the peninsula, which is presumably why all those nature preserves cannot be merged. So the movement of animals from further south along the Santa Cruz Mountains is probably relatively restricted. That doesn't prevent mountain lions from making their way near and even into San Francisco, but in no way should the situation diminish concern for habit loss.