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Roy Romer, who never met a growth he didn't like, just got re-elected by a handsome margin. That says one thing about Coloradans.
Then you read surveys, which inform us that growth has replaced crime as the leading worry of Coloradans. That says something else.
You feel as though you've just met a man with a drinking problem. It really worries him. It concerns him so much that he chugs Mad Dog 20 for breakfast, red-eye for lunch, rotgut for dinner and Sterno for snacks. But in his few lucid moments, he tells you that he's quite disturbed by all this alcohol in his system. Then he takes another swig.
That's basically what you read in all the whining about how growth is ruining Colorado. Some woman worries that she can't smell the sagebrush any more. Other folks complain that they can't see many stars at night.
In 1919, one of my grandfathers homesteaded 17 miles from Bill, Wyo. I visited the ranch often in my youth. The stars at night were big and bright, for there was no artificial light as far as the eye could see, and it was easy to smell sagebrush if you were upwind of the privy and the corral.
Grandpa Wollen was willing to pay a price for that: no electricity, no running water, no natural gas, no telephone, no paved road.
And if the worriers were willing to give up those conveniences, they, too, could even now find places of lustrous stars and the redolence of sage. It's just not as important to them as it was to him. They don't want to pay (in the currency of poverty and isolation) for what they want, and so why should we listen to them? What makes them different from any other beggars?
Growth in Colorado seems to follow what Boulder
cartoonist and writer Rob Pudim once called the
Evergreen Syndrome.
You move to the woods to get away from it all. But those kerosene lamps are a lot of work, and a major fire hazard to boot. So organize an electric co-op. Paying the new bill is tough on a rural income, so you start commuting to a city job, which means you want better roads. Your neighbor's septic tank is too close to your well, so you organize water and sanitation districts. Pretty soon you're living in a place that has it all, not a place that's away from it all.
If you had really cared about keeping those woods pristine, you wouldn't move to them and import the accouterments of civilization. You'd stay in town and admire the woods from afar.
If we really wanted to avoid the many adverse effects of growth in Colorado, we wouldn't look to government or to any blue-ribbon commissions. We'd change the way we conduct our daily lives.
We vote with our pocketbooks. Buy a house in some sterile suburb, accessible only by freeway, and you're voting for more of what we say we don't want: traffic, pollution, etc.
Buy a house within walking distance of work and shopping, and then actually walk, and you're voting for more of what the surveys say we want: better neighborhoods, tighter communities, etc.
Now examine the real-estate sections of today's paper. If there really was a demand for those walking-distance houses with swings on the front porch, you'd see big ads for such homes. You don't.
Every time you get in the car and go to a shopping mall, you're deciding what kind of place you'll live in, and it isn't the place people say they want: the place where you walk to the ma-and-pa store, where they know you and the proprietor is a pillar of the community. If we wanted such businesses to thrive, we'd patronize them; despite our noble words, we actually want franchise freeway-ramp outlets that export their profits.
We may say it's important to preserve agricultural open space, but do we support it by looking for local produce?
This analysis could go on indefinitely, but the point should be clear by now. We make moral decisions every time we spend money, and the power to change things is in our pockets, not in the state capitol.
If we wanted to spend our money thoughtfully, we could have all the things we say we want. Real-estate developers would build pedestrian-scale small towns with commercial centers and diverse housing, rather than malls and income-segregated covenanted tracts. Independent merchants would flourish, as would the farmers in the open space outside town.
If we created markets for these things, then the
invisible hand
would hasten to supply them.
That this invisible hand moves in other directions says that we say one thing, but act in other ways. We're too lazy to change our daily routines, or to give much thought to the moral decisions we make with every purchase.
If you're serious about the vital importance of bright stars and sage aromas, you starve on two sections in the middle of nowhere, and forego electricity. Otherwise, it's not that important to you.
And if you're serious about a better life in Colorado, quit worrying about growth, and start paying attention to how you spend your money. The power is in your pocketbook.
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