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.Every month, one reads of would-be immigrants dying in thedesert or being robbed or shot, but that does not deter them.Other illegalimmigrants come from as far away as China and Central Asia, in ships thatunload them just off the coast.California residents are of two minds aboutall those Third World immigrants seeking to come here to attain the FirstWorld lifestyle.On the one hand, our economy is utterly dependent onthem to fill jobs in the service and construction industries and on farms.Onthe other hand, California residents complain that the immigrants competewith unemployed residents for many jobs, depress wages, and burden ouralready overcrowded hospitals and public education system.A measure(Proposition 187) on the 1994 state election ballot, overwhelmingly ap-proved by voters but then gutted by the courts on constitutional grounds,would have deprived illegal immigrants of most state-funded benefits.NoCalifornia resident or elected official has suggested a practical solution tothe long-standing contradiction, reminiscent of Dominicans' attitudetowards Haitians, between needing immigrants as workers and otherwiseresenting their presence and their own needs.Southern California is a leading contributor to the energy crisis.Ourcity's former network of electric streetcars collapsed in bankruptcies in the1920s and 1930s, and the rights of way were bought up by automobile man-ufacturers and subdivided so as to make it impossible to rebuild the net-work (which competed with automobiles).Angelenos' preference for livingin houses rather than in high-rise apartments, and the long distances anddiverse routes over which employees working in any given district com-mute, have made it impossible to design systems of public transportationthat would satisfy the needs of most residents.Hence Los Angelenos are de-pendent on motorcars.Our high gas consumption, the mountains ringing much of the Los An-geles basin, and prevailing wind directions generate the smog problem thatis our city's most notorious drawback (Plate 38).Despite progress in com-bating smog in recent decades, and despite seasonal variation (smog worstin the late summer and early autumn) and local variation (smog generallyworse as one precedes inland), Los Angeles on the average continues to ranknear the bottom of American cities for air quality.After years of improve-ment, our air quality has again been deteriorating in recent years.Anothertoxic problem that affects lifestyle and health is the spread of the disease-causing organism giardia in California's rivers and lakes over the last several decades.When I first moved here in the 1960s and went hiking in themountains, it was safe to drink water from streams; today the guaranteedresult would be giardia infection.The problem of habitat management of which we are most conscious isthe fire risk in Southern California's two predominant habitats, chaparral (ascrub woodland similar to the macchia of the Mediterranean) and oakwoodland.Under natural conditions both habitats experienced occasionalfires from lightning strikes, like the situation in Montana forests that I dis-cussed in Chapter 1.Now that people are living in and next to those highlyflammable habitats, Angelenos demand that fires be suppressed immedi-ately.Each year, the late summer and early fall, which are the hottest anddriest and windiest time of year in Southern California, are the fire season,when somewhere or other hundreds of homes will go up in flames.Thecanyon in which I live has not had a fire get out of control since 1961, whenthere was a big fire that burned 600 houses.A theoretical solution to thisproblem, as in Montana forests, might be frequent controlled small-scalefires to reduce the fuel load, but such fires would be absurdly dangerous inthis densely populated urban area, and the public would not stand for it.Introduced alien species are a big threat and economic burden to Cali-fornia agriculture, the current leading threat being the Mediterranean fruitfly.Non-agricultural threats are introduced pathogens threatening to killour oak trees and pine trees.Because one of my two sons became interestedas a child in amphibians (frogs and salamanders), I have learned that mostspecies of native amphibians have been exterminated from two-thirds ofthe streams in Los Angeles County, as the result of the spread of three alienpredators on amphibians (a crayfish, bullfrog, and mosquitofish) againstwhich Southern California amphibians are helpless because they neverevolved to avoid those threats.The major soil problem affecting California agriculture is salinization asa result of irrigation agriculture, ruining expanses of agricultural land inCalifornia's Central Valley, the richest farmland in the United States.Because rainfall is low in Southern California, Los Angeles depends forits water on long aqueducts, principally from the Sierra Nevada mountainrange and adjacent valleys of Northern California, and from the ColoradoRiver on the eastern border of our state.With the growth of California'spopulation, there has been increasing competition for those water suppliesamong farmers and cities.With global warming, the Sierra snowpack thatprovides most of our water will decrease, just as in Montana, increasing thelikelihood of water shortages in Los Angeles. As for collapses of fisheries, the sardine fishery of Northern Californiacollapsed early in the 20th century, the abalone industry of Southern Cali-fornia collapsed a few decades ago soon after my arrival, and the rockfishfishery of Southern California is now collapsing and has become subject tosevere restrictions or closure within the last year.Fish prices in Los Angelessupermarkets have increased by a factor of 4 since I moved here.Finally, losses of biodiversity have affected Southern California's mostdistinctive species.The symbol of the state of California, and of my univer-sity (the University of California), is the California Golden Bear, but it isnow extinct.(What dreadful symbolism for one's state and university!)Southern California's population of sea otters was exterminated in the lastcentury, and the outcome of recent attempts at reintroduction is uncertain
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