by KaiserJeep » Thu 28 Dec 2017, 16:25:07
Actually, I think the total ties quite closely to how much money and effort one puts into monitoring and managing the environment.
My own neighborhood in the Southern extreme of California's Silicon Valley is a prime example. Make no mistake, this is a part of a medium density but quite large urban environment, the San Francisco Bay Area. It includes the classic dense city of San Francisco itself, the North Bay, Oakland, the South Bay, The East Bay, Silicon Valley, the Peninsula, and closeby communities such as Morgan Hill, Almaden Valley, Los Gatos, etc. In total between 7 and 12 million people, depending upon your definition of "bay area".
My home is smack against a county park, and we live with wildlife. I regularly have deer, turkey, racoons, opossums, coyotes, bobcats, and other critters on my property. In addition when hiking in the park I have seen a single mountain lion three times in 30 years, plus groups of wild pigs. My neighbors don't want to accept reality, which is that you cannot safely allow cats, dogs, or small children to run around outside unprotected. By the grace of God it has been a couple of decades since the last mountain lion fatality - a healthy woman jogger, not a child. But I weary of all the "lost pet" postings in the neighborhood online group - I mean get a clue, people, the surrounding predators are using your pets as a smorgasboard. You definately don't want to leave small children unsupervised in your backyard, as with 7' high redwood board fences I get both coyote and bobcat visitors in mine.
The human predators are even worse, of course. Ever since "Megan's Law", we have an online registry, and the sheer number of registered sex offenders in the surrounding neighborhood is startling - that's not counting those that have not yet been caught or who do not live at their registered address but live here instead.
Note that the suburbs and medium density apartments have filled the area from bay to hills on all sides, few undeveloped properties exist, and we are totally dependant upon food imported from outside the bay area, power generated outside, and vehicle fuels as well. Yes we have busses and trains and vanpools, but without cheap oil, this place would be uninhabitable.
Still, with further development of renewable energies, plus transport not dependant upon petroleum fuels, I do not doubt that the present most populous state could feed itself without oil, and still manage to export some food. I doubt that we would continue to supply 1/4th the USA's vegetables and fruits as we do today.
The USA as a whole IMHO would sustainably support 100M people. Unfortunately we have 330+M today. A vital part of falling back to the sustainable number is closing our borders to refugees. Although that sounds harsh, it is absolutely necessary. I don't know how much interst there is in the process of reducing the Earth as a whole from 7.6+B to 1B or less, or whether we need a seperate thread to discuss this related topic.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001
Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.
Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0