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 Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/ hastings_environmental_law_journal Part of the Environmental Law Commons Recommended Citation A. Dan Tarlock, A Brief Examination of the History of Persistent Debate About Limits to Western Growth, 10 Hastings West Northwest J. of Envtl. L. & Pol'y 155 (2004) Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_environmental_law_journal/vol10/iss2/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Environmental Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WEST NORTHWEST 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 settle- ment. 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 ini- tially 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-arid- ity 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 technol- ogy, 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). 155 WEST 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). 156 WEST 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. 157 WEST 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.