Growth is not sustainable

Re: “Growing need — Aurora and Colorado Springs take the first steps to build $ 500 million dam, reservoir near Holy Cross Wilderness,” Sept. 6 news story

We read that Colorado Springs and Aurora are planning on spending $ 500 million dollars to tap the environment for more water to serve a growing population. You would think that as we see the results of the climate crisis in wildfires, drought, floods, etc. we might start thinking of the cause.

On a finite planet that some scientists say can only support 2 billion to 3 billion people sustainably, it seems only logical that the more humans, the more human- caused climate crisis. There are only two ways that I can see that will bring our population to a sustainable level. The first is to empower women and girls and provide them with education and birth control. The other way is to accept mass migration and the wars that will likely follow, and to accept starvation and disease which will come as the climate crisis grows.

It appears that human hubris is causing us to chose the latter.

Don Thompson, Alamosa

● ● ●

It’s beyond my simple powers of logic to understand why we continue to inject even more growth and development into an increasingly arid and fire- prone area like Colorado. Colorado Springs has become particularly voracious in its demands for more water.

When visiting the eastern Colorado Springs area, I see many acres of land under development that begs the question of where the city will find the water to support its otherwise unsustainable growth rate.

While land development immediately increases local tax revenues and creates new jobs in the upscale real estate and construction markets, it also tends to displace lower- wage earners and retirees living on fixed incomes.

Colorado already has a growing population of working poor and unemployed homeless, which calls for even more taxes to fund the social safety net required to support these unintended consequences of extreme growth.

Last but not least, recklessly changing an ecological system that Mother Nature has spent tens of thousands of years building is not a wise practice.

To the contrary, draining our underground aquifers and depleting the run- off from our mountain valleys for the sheer sake of profit is equivalent to a farmer selling his seed corn for pennies on the dollar.

Once gone, the seed corn can’t be replaced, and neither can the water.

Gary E. Goms, Buena Vista