Paved Over

Perhaps prices are up these days because importers are bidding up declining net oil exports. It might just be that simple. However, supply doesn't appear to be the issue. I can drive the Pacer to any gas station anywhere in the world and buy as much as I want. No limits...except my maxed out credit cards.

I had to drive a SMUD car up to Fresh Pond (up in the mountains) this morning and looking around Highway 50, you'd never know anything was different today than in 2004: huge capital projects, (restaurants, muffler shops...) still being built in Folsom; highway expansion and bypass projects in Placerville; and still enough traffic to mire existing commuters, let alone those projected from the build-out of the 18,000 home Sunrise-Douglas area. We are in just a transitory condition. Home prices will rebound, gas will fall, the dollar will rise, and we'll soon be again off and building, hurriedly trying to pave over the entire Sacramento county by 2050.

I asked a friend at lunch a few months back how he would like it when the entire county is paved over. He didn't answer directly, only to say that as he flies between SMF and LAX, he sees a shitload of undeveloped land down there. And he's right. There's a lot, and it'll be 2400 before we even come close to running out of dirt to develop. But he didn't answer my question...what would it be like if we eliminated all Sacramento county farms, fields, row crops, dairies, and the like, and built more strip malls, low density housing enclaves, drainage canals, and office parks?

To be sure...I wouldn't even notice. All I see daily is Franklin Blvd. and it really wouldn't affect me, personally, if there's 26 million more people in my county occupying all the other vacant land. If I have to pass another 400 subdivisions on top of the current 150 to get to Lake Camanche, what difference is it really? Perhaps I should simply accept it. We will get to alternative transportation soon enough, we will develop better ways to extract usefulness from all energy sources, and we'll all start telecommuting. We don't have to physically gather together anymore as we don't manufacture anything in Sacramento county, certainly not when we pave over formerly marginal farmlands, so bring on telecommuting.

If I don't concern myself with such things, I can focus all that energy elsewhere -- into woodworking, sailing, camping, family travel, personal relationships, on and on. There will always be enough wood to work. Always enough energy to get me to other destinations in the manner that I choose. Why should I be at all concerned about all the things that define the Franklin Monologues...if I can't control them...