The Sky Is Falling

There are quite a few ways of getting a bleak look at the world in 2016. One is to follow the media's schizophrenic coverage of police shootings. Another is to look at the many awesome instances of uncontrollable deforestation and pollution that humans create. One can also just look to modern politics in the western world and assume that it's a hopeless mess.

But don't worry!

The world has been facing all of these issues for decades.

Wait, that doesn't comfort you? Yeah, it doesn't help anybody who goes to a university to get an education in anything related to environmental science, ecology, or urban planning either. Environmental science curricula inherently focuses on solving or preventing damages to the environment, you spend most of your time looking at past failures as a result. Ecology is mostly in the same boat except even more complex and is often concerned with species that are facing extinction (or that have already gone extinct in the wild). Urban planning may seem like the odd man out, but in truth it hugely influences the other two.

Through census data and open source Geographical Information System software like QGIS, practically anyone can visualize data on income inequality and socioeconomic demographic information. That's quite the mouthful, but it essentially means that you or anyone else can in the space of a few weeks go from zero firsthand knowledge of geospatial analysis to producing maps and charts that clearly illustrate the statistics of the world you live in.

A small city like Adelanto in California, with a population of around thirty thousand, can be analyzed through publicly available census data which then allows educated guesses about its socioeconomic status. I once did an analysis like this with a friend just as a side project. It only took an hour or two of my time and my conclusion was that it's a city full of corruption, at least historically, and economic disparity. My friend looked up pertinent news stories and articles and found that the police department had been disbanded due to extensive corruption and that the city was courting outside business as a way to revitalize itself in the face of an economic downturn after the closure of a US Air Force base and a subsequent failed 'prison economy'.

(On a side note, I hate private prisons. The humane treatment and rehabilitation of anyone should be on the shoulders of everyone, not just a corporation.)

Nowadays Adelanto's future looks much brighter than its past. Cannabis cultivation is set to bring in millions of dollars according to the OC Register. I am hesitant to believe that the cannabis industry is going to be a panacea for the problems of a city like this because it takes more than a few bad eggs to create a police department so corrupt that it need be disbanded. However, signs point to the city as a whole being revitalized in the near future. This endeavor will no doubt help thousands of people who live in Adelanto and, if it goes particularly well, should operate as a successful case study for regulating a drug instead of trying to make war on it.

If the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, is executed properly then the environmental impacts of an agricultural operation like the ones proposed in Adelanto should be mitigated. The expert opinions of urban planners, ecologists, and environmental scientists should be sought after and heeded to create an industry that belongs instead of destroys. Sadly, if history has taught me anything it's that these expert opinions will be largely disregarded and CEQA will be almost entirely ignored through a loophole and some backroom deals; categorical exemptions are a funny tool for developers. For now though, things are looking up for the city of Adelanto. Additionally, this endeavor is probably good for people who don't live in Adelanto because if they can do it surely everyone else can too.

They didn't exactly start from great beginnings, but they may be headed to greatness regardless.

The sky probably isn't falling.

See you later.