A Brief Examination of the History of Persistent Debate About Limits to Western Growth A

Hastings Environmental Law Journal Volume 10 Article 3 Number 2 Spring 2004

1-1-2004 A Brief Examination of the History of Persistent Debate About Limits to Western Growth A. Dan Tarlock

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I. Introduction A persistent theme in the history of the American West is of the question of what limits, if any, the region’s arid and semiarid climates and harsh landscapes impose on sustainable human settlement. As Carry McWilliams noted in his pioneering eco-history of the Los Angeles A Brief Examination of the basin, “the region is a paradox: a desert History of the Persistent that faces an ocean.”1 Many Westerners Debate About Limits have long recognized the problems of to Western Growth putting people in generally warm, but not naturally well-watered areas with poor soils. But, for over a century and one-half, By A. Dan Tarlock* the West has resoundingly answered the limits question, no; there are no climatic or landscape limits on our growth! To settle the West, its promoters harked back to the book of Genesis rather than the Hebrew prophets. They imagined a modern Garden of Eden in a region initially perceived as incapable of support- ing a large permanent population because of its harsh, non-northern European environment.2 To overcome the challenges that aridity and semi-aridity posed to the settlement of most of the West, settlers relied first on faith reflected in beliefs such as “rain follows the plow” and then on faith in science and technology, eventually supported with generous federal government subsidies. Two wars destroyed our unbounded faith in the idea of scientific and technological

* Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law. A.B. 1962, LL.B. 1965, Stanford University. 1. CAREY MCWILLIAMS, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA COUNTRY: AN ISLAND ON THE LAND 6 (1946). 2. For a good history of the settlement of the inhospitable Imperial Valley, see EVAN R. WARD, BORDER OASIS: WATER AND THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF THE COLORADO RIVER DELTA, 1940-1975 (2003).

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NORTHWEST A. Dan Tarlock Volume 10, Number 2 progress. Nonetheless, faith in human dependent on the traditional commodity ingenuity to outwit nature still drives our production activities.7 natural resources and land use policies. The decline of German geographical After the collapse of large-scale gold determinism reinforced the idea that and silver mining, cattle ranching, and there are no limits to human settlement.8 dry-land farming in California, the arid Historians have long speculated about West turned to irrigated agriculture and the relationship between climate and raw commodity production to sustain social organization.9 Geographical deter- 3 itself and the semiarid areas of the Great minism allowed historians to explain the Plains turned to dry land farming. In the distinctive cultural and economic patterns 20th Century, the constitutional formula that developed in particular regions. of “one state = two senators” allowed the Environmental determinism paid particu- West to build on the tradition of public lar attention to the role of climate on cul- land disposal to capture a large share of ture and society. However, this simplistic federal monies. As Gerald Nash has cause and effect relationship was rejected argued, during World War II, “essentially, in the United States in the 1920s, and it the federal government promoted the died after World War II. Nazi Germany restructuring of the natural resource- used earlier work by German scholars to based colonial economy into a technolog- support racial explanations for alleged ically oriented and service economy stim- superiority of northern European culture. ulated by massive federal expenditures.”4 As a result of this misuse of science, the Federal spending and subsidies, along emphasis on human adaptation to cli- with technologies such as air condition- mate and the landscape gradually receded ing,5 helped the West to develop as a from the story of “civilization,”10 although series of industrial, federal and military,6 it has begun to reappear in a more hum- and distribution urban oases. These have ble, complex and non-deterministic now morphed into more widespread arch- form.11 ipelagos, ironically increasingly less

3. See PISANI, TO RECLAIM A DIVIDED WEST: WATER, 75-87 (1985). LAW, AND PUBLIC POLICY (1992); DONALD PISANI, WATER, 7. See Report of the Western Water Review LAND AND LAW IN THE WEST: THE LIMITS OF PUBLIC Policy Advisory Commission, WATER IN THE WEST: POLICY, 1850-1920 (1996). CHALLENGE FOR THE NEXT CENTURY, Chapter 2 (1998). 4. GERALD NASH, THE FEDERAL LANDSCAPE: AN 8. See Richard Peet, THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WEST 52 ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINISM, 73 ANNALS OF THE AM. (1999). ASS’NOFGEOGRAPHERS 309 (1985). 5. The widespread adoption of air condition- 9. E.g., NORMAN POUNDS, A HISTORICAL AND ing after World War II is another important com- POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE (George G. Harrap & ponent of the rapid urbanization of the southwest. Co. 1947) See, e.g., GAIL COOPER, AIR CONDITIONING AMERICA IMMONS NVIRONMENTAL ISTORY (1998); MARSHA ACKERMAN, COOL COMFORT: AMERICA’S 10. I. G. S , E H : A ONCISE NTRODUCTION ROMANCE WITH AIR-CONTINUING (2002). C I 179 (1993). ORDON AST HE EOGRAPHY 6. GERALD D. NASH, THE AMERICAN WEST 11. E.g., W. G E , T G EHIND ISTORY OW HYSICAL NVIRONMENT FFECTS TRANSFORMED: THE IMPACT OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR B H : H P E A HISTORICAL EVENTS (1965).

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Spring 2004 Debate About Limits to Western Growth NORTHWEST Submerged as it is, the question of nals the end of the Reclamation Era, a limits returns with events such as eco- time when the answer to water shortages nomic down turns and rapid economic was another dam and reservoir. booms or droughts. However, western Jeremiahs have mainly been ignored, mar- This essay provides a brief specula- ginalized or demonized, as have other, tion about the modern relevance of the more recent expounders of the severe lim- rejected ideas of those who envisioned its on the planet’s ability to sustain more modest settlement patterns in the human life. Limits were an academic sub- West. It examines the thinking of several ject, but not a subject for serious policy. dissenters from our unlimited faith in However, the limits question has now technology to outwit nature: John Wesley become the subject of serious, Powell, Morris Cook, Thomas Griffith respectable debate as the role of govern- Taylor, and the greater western writer, ment in promoting regional growth Wallace Stegner. recedes at the same time that population This essay argues that these former growth in many water-short areas contin- dissenters from the prevailing unbridled ues to surge.12 Much of the debate is optimism and disregard for the fragile driven by the growing realization that the western landscape offer lessons that Reclamation Era has ended and that have relevance today. To extract these many areas will have to live within limited lessons, however, their thinking must be water budgets. In addition to drought purged of any romantic notions of a colo- fears, other problems such as air pollu- nial West and reinterpreted in light of tion and urban sprawl contribute to the both the urban West and the reemerging revival of interest in the limits question. frontier West. The prospect that global climate may cause a net decease in water availability The first lesson that the dissenters during the peak irrigation season adds teach us is that the West’s climate and another layer to the limits debate.13 In landscapes do not pose insurmount- states such as California, New Mexico, able barriers to large-scale urban set- and Nevada the projected gap between tlement. As preeminent mid-20th cen- growing urban demands and available tury chronicler of the West, Wallace supplies is high on the political agenda. Stegner said toward the end of his life, “California . . . has the water and the cli- The Department of the Interior’s deci- mate and the soil to support a popula- sion to limit California to its Colorado tion like Japan, if it has to.”14 This les- Compact Entitlement has had many son reflects the hard truth that thanks repercussions. The most important long - to technology, we can put a great many term repercussion is that the decision sig- people in most of the West.

12. Water Resources and Their Limits, 2003 A.B.A. 13. Wilkinson, Climate Sec. Nat. Resources & Env’t 18 (2003). In 2003, the 14. WALLACE STEGNER & RICHARD W. ETULAIN, ABA Section on Environment, Energy and Natural CONVERSATIONS WITH WALLACE STEGNER ON WESTERN Resources publication, Natural Resources & HISTORY AND LITERATURE (Revised ed. 1990). Environment, was devoted to the limits issues.

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NORTHWEST A. Dan Tarlock Volume 10, Number 2 The second and deeper lesson is that both individuals and governments are limits pose real resource constraints on unwilling to make the sacrifices and settlement. As population increases and investments to sustain settlement in all urban conurbations spread ever outward, harsh landscapes. the resource use choices that face the West become tougher because their II. From Desert to Eden opportunity costs increase. Those who To understand the limits debate, it is thought deeply about limits help us necessary to understand the changes in understand the continuing consequences the perception of the West that occurred of the resource use choices that we have in the 19th Century and how these made and the possibility of alternative changes made it difficult to develop a cli- choices, as well as how much western set- mate-based settlement policy. The Trans- tlement has depended on federal subsi- Mississippi West, acquired from France by dies that are hard to justify. the Louisiana Purchase, was originally The late David Gaines, who led the thought of as uninhabitable and akin to fight to save Mono Lake, understood the the fearsome steppes of Central Asia. In effects of resource choices. His aim was the official report of his exploration of to make people throughout California the Upper Mississippi River and the realize what would be lost if the lake con- Rocky Mountains, Major Stephen Long tinued to sink. If Californians, and partic- characterized the treeless Great Plains 16 ularly Angelenos, weighed those values, as the Great American Desert , a view understood them deeply, and decided to that largely prevailed until after the Civil sacrifice them for convenient and inex- War. For example, in 1855 Congress pensive water, Gaines would (so he said) appropriated $30,000.00 for the War accept the choice. But it had to be a Department to import seventy-five knowing choice.15 camels from Tunis and Syrma for use in the southern Great Plains.17 The third lesson is that limits manifest themselves through subtle combina- The desert myth began to break down tions of political choices, market forces, in the face of the subsequent scientific and climatic factors rather than in a more explorers who developed a more opti- dramatic apocalyptic fashion some sug- mistic view of the West’s potential. They gest. The early environmental movement revealed a much more complex picture of was filled with gloomy predictions of an the area from the Missouri River to the immediate apocalypse that have not Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountains. come to pass. However, the re-emergence John C. Fremont’s expeditions and reports of the frontier in the northern High Plains played a large role in dispelling the desert and other areas of the West shows that myth. For example, Brigham Young relied on Fremont’s information when he moved

15. JOHN HART, STORM OVER MONO: THE MONO 16. See WILLIAM GOETZMANN, EXPLORATION AND LAKE BATTLE AND THE CALIFORNIA WATER FUTURE 184 EMPIRE: THE EXPLORER AND THE SCIENTIST IN THE (1996). WINNING OF THE AMERICAN WEST 60-64 (1994). 17. FREDERICK MERK, HISTORY OF THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 246-247 (1978).

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Spring 2004 Debate About Limits to Western Growth NORTHWEST the Mormons from Illinois to Utah in farmers into a regional development pro- 1845-1847.18 gram that supplied water and cheap power to urban interests, as well as to However, science was overcome by irrigators. science again as the desert myth was followed by an even more scientifically erro- The Reclamation Era is over and we neous theory designed to spur large-scale are now in the era of reallocation and emigration: “rain follows the plow.”19 The management. However, the principle that theory held that plowing the ground water should not limit growth has sur- would make it more susceptible to rain. vived the end of the Reclamation Era. The The emergence of the theory coincided following sketches of the four dissenters with high rainfall years on the Plains. It illustrate the difficulties of raising the took the drought of the 1890s to dispel question of limits, but they also illustrate the myth.20 the costs of over-reliance on the idea that we can always outrun nature. After the “rain follows the plow” theory was debunked, in part by John Wesley III. Four Dissenters From the Powell’s work, a broader theory emerged Geography of Hope and established deep roots in the West. A. John Wesley Powell: Prophet of ? This new theory asserted that man could overcome any limits to settlement posed If John Muir is the patron saint of by arid or semi-arid climates through modern environmentalism, John Wesley technological adaptation and growth. The Powell is the patron saint of the idea that Upper Midwest turned to dry farming but western settlement should be adapted to the Inner-Mountain West and California the region’s climate and soil rather than turned to irrigation made possible by visa versa. Today, Powell is best known as large carry-over storage reservoirs. During the first person to navigate the Colorado the Reclamation Era (1902-1968)21, the River through the Grand Canyon.22 He is federal government transformed a pro- also known for his unsuccessful efforts to gram originally intended to benefit small design a rational land and water policy

18. D.W. MEINIG,3 THE SHAPING OF AMERICA: dams at either end of the Grand Canyon in 1968 TRANSCONTINENTAL AMERICA 93 (1998). and the passage of the Wild and Scenic Rivers 19. The idea is traced to Josiah Gregg’s book, Act in that same year marked the end of the Reclamation Era. The Era lingered for another COMMERCE ON THE PRAIRIES (1844). Gregg was one of the first to articulate the idea that extensive twenty years in theory, but President Carter’s cultivation of the earth might contribute to the 1977 hit list became reality in the domestically multiplication of showers. Ferdinand V. Hayden, fiscal conservatism of the Reagan years. In Director of the Geological and Geographical 1986, the Bureau of Reclamation, in a move Survey of the Territories, gave the theory scientif- analogous to the fall of the Soviet Union in ic credibility in his first report to the Secretary of 1989, renounced state capitalism and took on the Interior. the role of resource manager. 20. Id. at 23. 22. The most gripping account of the journey remains, WALLACE STEGNER, BEYOND THE HUNDREDTH 21. The idea that the Reclamation Era has MERIDIAN:THE EXPLORATION OF THE GRAND CANYON AND ended remains heresy in much of the West, but the THE SECOND OPENING OF THE WEST (1953). reality is that the defeat of the two cash register

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around aridity,23 or more accurately, high- Westerner to admit that the country was ly variable water supplies. Almost alone dry25 were rebuffed by Congress. among his contemporaries, he looked at Nonetheless, Powell’s proposals for west- the arid region and saw neither desert nor ern land and water policy present the first garden. What he saw was a single com- serious effort to propose a sustainable pelling component that the region pos- settlement policy, and thus they remain sessed: except in local island areas, its the models for sustainable alternatives to rainfall was less than twenty inches a year. the historic encouragement of unlimited Powell took those twenty inches, with and unplanned growth. Walter Prescott slight modifications for the particularly Webb and Wallace Stegner carried forth concentrated rainfall in the Dakotas, to be Powell’s legacy,26 which remains at the the minimum needed to support agricul- core of modern environmental thought 24 ture without irrigation. His famous and rhetoric regarding resource limits.27 Report on the Lands of the Arid Region con- cluded that only a small percentage of Powell remains very relevant because the West could be irrigated, and thus set- some of his predictions are slowly materi- tlements should be concentrated and alizing. Irrigation is not the foundation of organized by cooperative irrigation dis- much of the West; it is becoming a steady- tricts. He pressed this claim at the state or niche culture. In 1991, only Second Irrigation Congress in 1893 to the Montana and Washington State had more disgust and boos of the faithful. than 10 percent of their land in crop production. In 1993, only three states— The federal government and the West California, Colorado, and Idaho—had rejected Powell’s effort to promote a more than a million hectares under irriga- rational and ultimately modest settle- tion.28 The amount of land dedicated to ment policy based on the division of the irrigation is shrinking in almost all west- West into hydrologic basins and irrigation ern irrigation areas including California, colonies. His efforts to use science to Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. break down both tradition and the gener- Irrigated agriculture will eventually have al feeling that it was unpatriotic for a

23. JOHN WESLEY POWELL, REPORT ON THE LANDS HISTORY: HUMANKIND’S EMERGING ROLE IN THE OF THE ARID REGION OF THE UNITED STATES (Wallace COMMUNITY OF LIFE 209-211 (2001). See also CHARLES Stegner ed. 1962). DONALD WORSTER, A RIVER SOKOL BEDNAR, TRANSFORMING THE DREAM: ECOLOGISM RUNNING WEST: THE LIFE OF JOHN WESLEY POWELL 337- AND THE SHAPING OF THE ALTERNATIVE AMERICAN VISION 380 (2001). Worster, Powell’s latest biographer and (2003). This thinking can be traced in New Mexico a noted environmental historian, argues that water publications such as NEW MEXICO Powell was impressed by the Mormon communi- ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER, LIVING WITHIN OUR tarian society that flourished in Utah in the 1870s. MEANS: A WATER MANAGEMENT POLICY FOR NEW MEXICO IN THE 21ST CENTURY (1992); DESIGNWRIGHTS 24. STEGNER, supra note 23, at 223-224. COLLABORATIVE, INC., WATER & PEOPLE IN NEW MEXICO 25. STEGNER, supra note 23, at 321. (1984). 26. WALTER PRESCOTT WEBB, THE GREAT PLAINS 28. Dick A. Auld, Development of New Crops in the ALLACE TEGNER HE MERICAN (1931). See also W S , T A Western United States 95, in NEW CROPS, (J. Janick and WEST AS LIVING SPACE (1989). J.E. Simon eds. 1993). ONALD UGHES N NVIRONMENTAL 27. J. D H ,A E 29. Studies include DONALD WORSTER, THE DUST

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Spring 2004 Debate About Limits to Western Growth NORTHWEST to make hard choices about its future sur- Pennsylvania and was recruited by then vival in the face of powerful counter- Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt to become domestic and international market trends. a member of the New York Power Irrigated agriculture will have to accept Authority. After Roosevelt became the prospect of occupying a more limited, President, Cooke became the head of the concentrated space in the West—as Rural Electrification Administration. In Powell envisioned. 1936, Cooke was made the Chairman of the Great Plains Drought Area Committee. B. Morris L. Cooke: Proponent of a Its members included some of the New Sustainable Great Plains Deal’s most influential thinkers and stu- The unsuccessful effort of New Deal dents of rural land and natural resources planners to develop a scientific response policy such as Hugh H. Bennett, Chief of to the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s illustrates the Soil Conservation Service, and Powell’s initial marginal influence. This is Rexford Tugwell, who held various posi- a classic case of the historic refusal to tions in the Department of Agriculture. develop settlement policies based on Tugwell, a member of Roosevelt’s Brain inherent limits. However, the continuing Trust, was the principal proponent of the tragedy of the Great Plains illustrates the theory that American agriculture was need to pay more attention to Powell. In primitive compared to industrial produc- 1935, a high-level committee was formed tion and that the nation suffered from to propose remedies for the ecological efforts to farm too much marginal land. and social disaster that we call the Dust The well-known Report of the Great 29 Bowl. Plains Drought Area Committee recommend- The Committee followed Powell’s ed a land use policy for the Great Plains classification of the region, an area out- based on the inherent limitations of the side of rain islands in the mountains, and region with respect to intensive agricul- identified the lack of rainfall as the funda- ture and human settlement—what we mental reason that “[t]he agricultural would now call genuine environmentally economy of the Great Plains will become sustainable development. Following Powell, the Committee stated directly that increasingly unstable and unsafe. . . .”30 humans must adapt to the harsh, unfor- Its chair was Morris L. Cooke, one of a giving climate of the Great Plains, not vice small group of New Dealers who tried to versa, through withdrawal and concentra- reorient United States agricultural policy tion. The basic cause of the present Great in a way that we would now define as sus- Plains situation is the attempt to impose tainable. Cooke was the protégé of a system of agriculture upon a semi-arid Gifford Pinchot in Pennsylvania. Cooke and arid region using methods that, on was also the architect of a program of low the whole, are suitable only for a humid electricity rates and rural electrification in region.

BOWL (1979); R. DOUGLAS HURT, THE DUST BOWL AREA COMMITTEE,8. (1981). 30. 1936 REPORT OF THE GREAT PLAINS DROUGHT

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NORTHWEST A. Dan Tarlock. Volume 10, Number 2 The report addressed the issue of car- as fallowing, greater crop diversity, con- rying capacity with a level of frankness touring, and stubble retention were put in that would be hard to find in today’s gov- place along with the famous shelter belts. ernment reports.31 Whether or not the Almost seventy years later, the bill for region can adequately support the popu- this timidity has come due. The genius of lation now residing within its limits is a United States settlement policy, com- question that cannot be answered at pres- pared to similar countries such as ent. In the long run, a transfer from crop- Australia, Brazil, and Canada is that it set- ping to grazing would undeniably reduce tled all parts of the United States’ land 32 the population in some areas. This bold mass (with the exception of Alaska). diagnosis of the partial withdrawal of set- However, the idea that the same settle- tlement was too far ahead of its time. ment pattern could be repeated endlessly Rather than address the root of the prob- must now be reevaluated. The depopula- lem, we implemented incremental meas- tion of the region (and other rural areas) ures. President Franklin D. Roosevelt con- is now a major social issue.33 But, unlike sidered himself a forester and saw plant- the New Deal, it is not a political one. In ing trees as the answer to almost all the 1980s, two geographers, Frank and pressing problems of land degradation. Deborah Popper applied Fredrick Jackson In the end, more modest, incremental Turner’s frontier methodology and found responses such as the widely praised that much of the Great Plains was revert- shelter belts were implemented, creating ing to frontier status. They proposed that the current dysfunctional rural welfare the Great Plains accept depopulation and economy that is sustained only by the the withdrawal of settlement and become subsidies that our irrational federal sys- 34 tem produces. New farming methods such a “buffalo commons.” Although the idea was too radical for its time, much of

31. See e.g., ALLEN TYRCHNIEWICZ & ART WILSON, being defined by professionals to try and better SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FOR THE GREAT PLAINS: understand the diversity of rural areas. However, POLICY ANALYSIS (Int’l Institute for Sustainable the continued rural-to-urban migration in the Development. 1994). This Canadian study of the northern Great Plains, high drug use in rural areas, Prairie Provinces is a thoughtful analysis of the the inability to attract recreation-oriented in- factors that should be taken into account in evalu- migration in comparison to the Inner-Mountain ating the sustainability of agricultural production West, and increasing poverty rates all point to the in this region, but calls only for the development need to recapture the New Deal’s focus on these of a sustainability index. areas. 32. REPORT, supra note 31, at 14. 34. The original article is Deborah E. Popper 33. The United States Bureau of the Census and Frank Popper, The Great Plains: From Dust to Dust, defines a frontier county as one with less than 7 PLANNING 12 (1987). The Poppers restated and persons per square mile. Montana has 47 such updated the thesis in The Buffalo Commons, Then and counties, South Dakota 39 and North Dakota 37. Now, THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY/FOCUS, 16 The respective populations of these states in fron- (Winter 1993). The idea has spawned an extensive tier status are 35, 25 and 24. Kansas and Nebraska literature. See CALLENBACH, BRING BACK THE BUFFALO! also have large numbers of frontier counties but A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FOR AMERICA’S GREAT PLAINS much less of the population lives in these areas (1996); DANIEL LITCH, ECOLOGY AND THE ECONOMICS OF due to the urban areas in the semi-humid eastern THE GREAT PLAINS (1997); RICHARD S. WHEELER, THE areas of these states. The concept of frontier is BUFFALO COMMONS (1998).

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Spring 2004 Debate About Limits to Western Growth NORTHWEST the Great Plains continues to revert to remaining population largely in metro- frontier status. A combination of gov- politan areas and an increasing recogni- ernment policies, globalization (out- tion of the economic value of ecosystem migration of manufacturing and crop services.37 production), and market forces are com- bining to make disbursed settlement C. Griffith Taylor: A Detour to unsustainable in one sixth of the United Australia to Understanding the States land mass.35 Carrying Capacity Debate The Poppers now describe the “buffa- Since the 1970s, any form of gross lo commons” theory as a metaphor rather national population limitation has been than a prescription and have become off the table as a matter of national poli- 38 more nuanced in their articulation of it. cy. States cannot deflect the population Their fundamental argument that the of other states. The implied Great Plains accept limits on human set- Constitutional right to travel prohibits tlement is slowly progressing through the states from refusing to accommodate stages of most powerful, innovative ideas. growth by refusing entry to new residents. It is passing through the rejection stage Just as states cannot hoard natural and is moving to acceptance and imple- resources,39 they cannot close their bor- mentation. Many people in the Great ders to interstate migration.40 Since Plains are still trying to devise policies to California tried to bar “Dust Bowl” stem the population decline, but there is migrants, no state has tried to directly increasing acceptance of the hard reality halt migration. States used many indirect that the Plains are not very well posi- means, such as welfare denial, in an effort tioned to be economically sustainable.36 to deter migration of the poor. There are, The federal government will not be a however, some contours of the right to major player in the development of a travel that support limited rather than regional policy as it has in the past. The unlimited growth accommodation. The region is groping toward more bottom-up right is one of entry not location; there is sustainability strategies based on popula- no right to locate in a particular commu- tion withdrawal, concentration of the

35. December 2 NYT the population-environmental quality link in the 36. Thomas D. Rowley, Sustaining the Great context of sustainable development, see Tom Plains, 13 Rural Development Perspectives 2 Pierce, A Constitutionally Valid Justification for the (1997). Enactment of No-Growth Ordinances: Integrating Concepts of Population Stabilization and Sustainability, 19 HAWAII 37. Florence Williams, Frank and Deborah L. REV. 93 (1997). Popper’s Buffalo Commons is Creeping Toward Reality, The High County News, January 15, 2001. 39. E.g., New England Power Co. v. New Hampshire, 455 U.S. 331 (1982). 38. In his inaugural lecture for the Stanford Environmental initiative, Mr. Population Control, 40. Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160 (1941) Paul Ehrlich, described population control as "off (holding that a state cannot bar entry of “indigent” the political radar screen.” A summary of the lec- non-residents). ture is available at http://news-service.stanford. edu/news/2003/december10/ehrlich-121-.html (last visited Apr. 14, 2004). For an effort to revive

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nity within the state.41 Thus, communi- programs with Australia and New Zealand ties retain considerable discretion to use to encourage immigration from Great their land use powers to decide where and Britain. Proponents of a white, Anglo- under what conditions they will accom- British Empire, such as the feisty premier modate the growth,42 thus deflecting Billy Hughes, projected a population of undesired growth to other jurisdictions. 100 million for Australia by the end of the 20th Century. Australia provides a different population debate model. Australia’s debate Taylor emerged as the leading scien- can be traced to Thomas Griffith tific critic of these estimates. He argued Taylor’s43 audacious criticism of the then that the country had already occupied the dominant, white only, population and territory best suited to human settlement. settlement expansion policies. Taylor Using his training in geology and meteor- was the first professor of geography at ology, he initially argued that Australia Sydney University and a leading propo- could only support 60 million people and nent of geographical or environmental would only have about 20 million people determinism. His criticisms of the by the end of the 20th Century because of Australian government population poli- its limited water resources and fragile, old cies were controversial. soils. He developed a series of hyther- graphs that indicated the rainfall and tem- Taylor’s sin was to use scientific perature parameters for the major methods similar to those used by John crops.44 A decade later he dropped the Wesley Powell to undermine the maximum figure to 20 million based on Australian government’s faith in white maintaining a high average standard of emigration to extend the area of settle- living. The most controversial aspect of ment, especially in the tropics of his theory was the suggestion that the Queensland. At the beginning of the 20th areas marked for settlement expansion Century, births and immigration levels would be more suitable for non-white began to fall in Australia. Between 1907 immigration.45 Thus, if white-only settle- and 1922, Great Britain developed a ment were desired, it would be modest, Dominion emigration policy. The Empire gradual, and should be based on scientif- Settlement Act of 1922 led to bilateral

41. Cf., e.g., Tobe v. Santa Ana, 892 P.2d 1145 tially less than the actual rate of growth in the (Cal. 1995) (holding that a city has no duty to pro- community. See Stoney-Brook Development Corp. vide camping space to facilitate the homeless’ v. Town of Fremont, 474 A.2d 561 (N.H. 1984). right to travel). See Robert Ellickson, Controlling 43. The only available biography is a short lec- Chronic Misconduct in City Spaces: Of Panhandlers, Skid ture text, J.M. POWELL, GRIFFITH TAYLOR AND Rows, and Public-Space Zoning, 105 YALE L. J. 1165, "AUSTRALIA UNLIMITED” (1993). TIM FLANNERY, THE 1239-1242 (1996). FUTURE EATERS: AN ECOLOGICAL HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN 42. Construction Industry Association v. City LANDS AND PEOPLE (1994) contains a full account of of Petaluma, 522 F.2d 897 (9th Cir. 1975), reh’g and the controversy and Taylor’s decision to leave the reh’g en banc denied, cert. denied, 424 U.S. 934 (1976) place that he always regarded as home. remains the leading case upholding phased 44. Powell, supra note 45, at 21-22. growth but suggesting there are limits on the city’s accommodation strategy. Courts have invalidated 45. Id., at 25. phased growth ordinances if the rate is substan-

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Spring 2004 Debate About Limits to Western Growth NORTHWEST ic planning. In his major geographical opportunity costs of growth. Australia is a study of Australia, he summed up his spectacular but often unforgiving land- argument: scape. For twenty years the present D. Wallace Stegner: A Tough writer endeavored to inform the Modern Critic of the Refusal to Australian public in regard to Heed the Lessons of Climate these important aspects of settlement. He stoutly maintained Perhaps no Westerner has thought that it was useless to try and fill more deeply about what it means to live up the arid and more tropic in an arid, non-northern European land- lands as long as there was better scape than Wallace Stegner. Stegner’s land not fully utilized in the novels, histories, and polemics against south and east. The argument public land decisions invoke the West from settlement to the present and stress holds good today.46 the continuities between landscape and The reaction to this heresy was fierce. character. Stegner, more than anyone, For example, the state of Western helped popularize John Wesley Powell’s Australia banned his textbook because it argument that resource management and contested the prevailing view that land use policies should be based on the Australia’s capacity to support people was region’s arid and variable climate rather unlimited. In 1928, he threw in the towel, than on subsidy and an uncritical notion resigned his position at Sydney of scientific and technological progress. University, and came to the University of He also sought to trace the connections Chicago before eventually settling in the between the myths of the West as a geog- more British environment of the raphy of hope and the reality of the West. University of Toronto. However, unlike However, it is difficult to draw lessons some prophets, Taylor’s legacy is very from Stegner’s writing in part because, at much alive in Australia. The question of heart, he was nostalgic for the hardscrab- the country’s carrying capacity is the sub- ble, pre-SUV-driving, non-latte-drinking ject of a lively continuing debate, and the West; a time when irrigation had not yet idea that people should adapt to a place grown beyond its legitimate bounds and rather than adapt the place to them is the West provided for its thin population taken more seriously than it is in the a hard living but wonderful life.48 United States.47 Environmentalists have In 1986, Stegner summed up his contributed to it by pointing out that a experience in a series of lectures at the sustainable population level is both a University of Michigan, published as The function of climatic limitations that con- 49 trol available water supplies and of the American West as Living Space. His princi-

46. GRIFFITH TAYLOR, AUSTRALIA: A STUDY OF WARM DOUG COCKS, POPULATION-IMMIGRATION POLICY IN ENVIRONMENTS AND THEIR EFFECT ON BRITISH AUSTRALIA (1998), available at http://www.lapshop. SETTLEMENTS 410 (5th ed. 1949). com.au/dougcocks/abernethyfinal.htm (last visited Apr. 14, 2004). 47. See JONATHAN STONE, EMPTY OR FULL? THE DEBATE OVER THE POPULATION OF AUSTRALIA (1995); 48. Id. at 60.

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NORTHWEST A. Dan Tarlock Volume 10, Number 2 pal argument was that the West had used the benefits of western civilization and technology to create a society largely dis- connected from the landscape and climate. This disconnect has come at clear, high fiscal, environmental, and social costs. Through generous federal subsidies, we created an irrigation society and later a universal urban society that eschewed any idea of adaptation to the landscape. V. Conclusion There are few if any natural barriers to the endless growth of the West. However, the limits question is an important one. As much of the West continues to grow or be exploited for raw commodi- ties, the opportunity costs of the choices we make increase. Thus, the constraints of climate and landscape manifest themselves through subtle combinations of political choices, market forces, and climatic factors rather than in a more dramatic apocalyptic fashion some suggest. This essay has not directly linked the limits question to existing legal doctrines and laws. However, the fact that the West’s landscape and climate impose high opportunity costs on many resource choices suggests that political50 and judicial decisions that include these costs should be accorded a presumption of validity.

49. Stegner, supra note 28. 50. E.g., Garvin v. Ninth Judicial District, 59 P.3d 1180 (Nev. 2002) (Nevada Supreme Court reverses prior decision prohibiting initiatives and referenda, holding that citizens can propose dwelling unit caps to protect groundwater resources).

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