Gary Patton
Read my latest
thoughts at
Abrazos / 365, my
daily blog.
In addition, each weekday, I provide a “Land Use Report” on KUSP Radio, the National Public Radio Station serving the California Central Coast. My Land Use Report comes on the air during the commute hours each morning, as a local insert to “Morning Edition.”
The Bug in the Bottle
Dr. Peter Scott, a professor of physics at the University of California, likes to show his students why it's sometimes so hard to take growth issues seriously.
Think of yourselves, says Professor Scott, as "bacteria in a bottle.” Suppose that the bacteria in the bottle are growing at a rate that doubles their population every minute, and that given its size, the bottle will be completely filled by bacteria in one hour. If that's true, and if it's eleven o'clock in the morning, and the bottle will be completely filled at noon, then when is the bottle going to be half full?
Did you guess 11:30? Well, that's not quite right. The bottle will be half full at 11:59, one minute before noon. One minute later, it will be all full. That's the nature of exponential growth--the same kind of growth we're experiencing in California.
The political and governmental lesson is pretty clear. If you were one of the bacteria in the bottle, you might not recognize how quickly things could change. At around 11:58, just two minutes before the bottle would be completely full, you would see that there was 75% open space in your bottle. Would you vote to control growth?
Maybe not. In California, our doubling time is measured in years, and not in minutes, but the lesson is the same. It's probably not too early, as Professor Scott tells his students, to take growth issues seriously.
Stats
name Gary Patton
location Santa Cruz, California
Contact Info:
Gary A. Patton, Of Counsel
Wittwer & Parkin, LLP
147 South River Street #221
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Email: gapatton@wittwerparkin.com
Website: www.wittwerparkin.com
Telephone: 831-429-4055, Ext. 13
FAX: 831-429-4057
I live in Santa Cruz County, where I was an elected member of the Board of Supervisors for twenty years, from 1975 to 1995. I am the author of Santa Cruz County's very successful growth management system, and am often asked to speak on land use and other environmental issues around the state.
You can get a flavor for the kind of approach I take by tuning into the "Land Use Report," which is aired each weekday during NPR's "Morning Edition" on Santa Cruz County radio station KUSP. If you are interested in land use and environmental policy issues, I also recommend that you check out the website of LandWatch Monterey County. I was the first LandWatch Executive Director, and am very proud of the difference that LandWatch has made in Monterey County.
As of January 1, 2009, I have become "Of Counsel" to Wittwer & Parkin, LLP, a Santa Cruz law firm that practices public agency and environmental law. Previously, I served as the General Counsel of PCL, the Planning and Conservation League (which means that I was both their in-house attorney and an active lobbyist in the State Legislature). PCL is based in Sacramento, and is the state's oldest environmental lobbying group. It works on virtually every sort of environmental and environmental justice issue that faces the State of California.
California's Threatened Environment
These timely essays describe how to rediscover a land where life can be lived and enjoyed to the fullest, free from the constant specter of pollution, overcrowding, and overdevelopment. Though focusing on California, the environment everywhere faces similar pressures. If solutions can be found for one region, perhaps there is hope for the rest of the country as well.
2010