Steve Pomerance

Our governments, both state and local, are suddenly freaking out about the “housing crisis.” Given the level of hype, you’d think that we were in Turkey, with earthquake-collapsed buildings in all directions. But no one seems willing to dig into the underlying causes. Instead, as has occurred many times before, they just push for more growth, while ignoring critical concerns: Coloradans actually want less or no growth; continuing to grow indefinitely is not sustainable; and the COVID “bump” was just that — people shifted to working remotely in more desirable living situations. Recent surveys say most Coloradans don’t want lots more people moving here. To quote one article, “Rasmussen Reports surveyed over 1,000 ‘likely to vote’ Coloradans to gauge their feelings on the matter. Overwhelmingly, the answers showed they want to limit population growth. In recent years 92% feel that the state has become more crowded. 90% desire a future where far fewer people move to the state. 59% prefer a...

It should be obvious, but apparently isn’t, that the doubling of the number of humans on the planet, from 4 billion in 1974 to 8 billion now, has overstressed our planet’s ability to support our presence in all sorts of ways, from the rapid increase in greenhouse gases leading to likely runaway climate change, to wiping out other species on a massive scale, to droughts threatening our ability to thrive. For example, arctic temperatures are rising almost four times as fast as the global average, potentially releasing hundreds of billions of tons of methane and carbon dioxide, according to some estimates, as permafrost melts. But our governments keep promoting more growth, as if that is magically going to solve our problems.  Locally, the latest is the push by both our governor and our city council for more and denser housing to allegedly help with the affordability issue. But at the same time, our state government’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) subs...