Re: [Texascavers] where a man can breathe free, and relevance to caves

[Rod Goke]

Regarding Gainesville Florida, Sleaze wrote,    "We don't want no stinking roads either." Austin tried that for about 2 or 3 decades, during which the attitude of local "environmentalists" towards roadway construction/expansion was:    Don't build it, and hope they won't come. They opposed road building on the theory that more roads would encourage more people to move here. The problem was that people came here anyway, resulting in severe traffic congestion problems, as bad or worst than those often found in much larger cities. Unfortunately, this kind of failure to provide workable long range solutions often results when people practice superficial environmentalism, addressing only the local effects and symptoms of population growth while shying away from any discussion of the underlying causes of these problems. It's not hard to see why people find this approach tempting. It's relatively easy for activists groups to drum up support and claim political victories by promoting petty "feel good" measures with no powerful opposition and little, if any, beneficial effect. It takes far more courage and perseverance to address the fundamental underlying population issues, since almost any measure that would really help to alleviate overpopulation is likely to encounter strong opposition from one or more influential groups. Different interest groups tend to object to different measures on various grounds, involving political, religious, ideological, and/or business interests, but almost any suggested solution is liable to get you attacked and demonized by someone. Consequently, most groups with environmental interest prefer to focus on the symptoms and ignore the cause, as if population growth were an inevitable force of nature, beyond the control of human beings. Never mind the obvious fact that population growth is entirely due to human action. How many times have we heard people quote population growth projections as inevitable facts about our future and then proceed to talk about how they think we should deal with the consequences of that growth? Why does no one seriously discuss the possibility of limiting population growth to prevent undesirable consequences? If any of you are wondering what this has to do with caves or are tempted to think of it as "off topic" then think again about the various cave related environmental and access issues that clearly are "on topic" for Texascavers. A large portion of these issues, probably most of them, are directly related to human population. For example, do you care about the effects of development near caves, including both environmental impacts and the effects of development on cave access? What do you think drives the demand for that development? Do you care about the effects on caves of quarrying, mining, or oil and gas production? What do you think drives the demand for these resources? Do you care about the quality and quantity of ground water, including that found in caves? What do you think influences the amount of pollution entering the aquifer and the amount of water that is pumped from it? Do you care about the effects of human visitation on caves and about the access restrictions that sometimes are imposed to limit those effects? What do you think affects the number of people seeking access? All of these, and undoubtedly more, cave related issues are directly affected by human population density. If these cave related effects of population growth are considered "on topic", how can we possibly dismiss the underlying cause as "off topic", unless, of course, it's just a cowardly attempt to avoid controversy about a relevant, but potentially contentious, issue? Rod P.S.  By the way, Sleaze, I was one of those graduate students who moved from Gainesville to Austin in 1973 for my first full time job in my profession. I would not say that "Gainesville is the Austin of Florida", because, although both are university towns, Austin is much more. Even at that time, Austin was (and still is) the state capitol, a center for high tech industry, and a regional music center, attracting musicians from many surrounding states in addition to Texas. The population of Austin at that time was approximately a quarter million (much smaller than it is now), but the University of Texas was so large (about 50,000 students) that it still gave Austin a university town atmosphere. At that time, I was impressed with the exceptional variety of influences and activities available in Austin for a city that small. I moved away from Austin in early '74 and returned in '84, finding that it had grown surprisingly larger but still was not a bad place to live. Now Austin still has advantages over many other cities its size, but in my opinion, it has grown far beyond its optimal size, and quality of life in the entire central Texas region continues to deteriorate from excessive population growth. I'm sure there are business interests who, like the purveyors of pyramid schemes, equate exponential growth with prosperity. For ordinary citizens, however, it means worse congestion, greater pollution, higher taxes, less freedom, and greater competition for limited natural resources. -----Original Message----- From: bmorgan...@aol.com Sent: Aug 5, 2011 3:49 PM To: texascavers@texascavers.com Subject: [Texascavers] where a man can breathe free In a message dated 8/5/2011 4:12:19 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, texascavers-digest-h...@texascavers.com writes: If all the people fretting over the numerous environmental and social problems resulting from overpopulation were to focus instead on the primary underlying cause, we might reverse this trend and see real progress towards long range solutions and improving quality of life for future generations Amen! Here in Hogtown the living is still easy, the moss hangs from the live oaks and all is well until the Students return. Gainesville is the Austin of Florida, but the big difference is that there are damned near two million Texacans in Austin but only about 250,000 gators in the Hogtown metro area. The reason for that is that we don't want no stinking jobs or new businesses unless they are directly related to University of Florida biotech spinoffs. As soon as they become successful they move to Austin taking the redundant grad students with them. We make it a point to screw every developer who sticks his head out of a hole. We often lose, but we still cost the developers millions every time they try. We don't want no stinking roads either. The bad news is the dawning of the age of biomass. It seems we have way too many trees, so the plan is to burn them in place of coal. After they cut down all the trees maybe I'll move to Detroit. I hear there are wide open spaces out there where a man can breathe free. Sleaze --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com