http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/printDS/230811 This is an example of just one common venue in which professional society position statements may be used to great effect. See especially the sentences in boldface below... Tucson growth: Growth backers ruled forumBy Dave EwoldtSPECIAL TO THE ARIZONA DAILY STARAbout 600 people attended "Tucson Growth: Decision at the Crossroads," a forum on understanding growth in the Tucson region on March 14 at the University of Arizona's Student Union Memorial Center ballroom. We gathered 106 questions at the forum that we plan to answer on this page on subsequent Sundays. We are sorting the questions and asking speakers, panelists and regional officials for answers. Today we offer two views of the forum itself. Links to reports and analyses on growth are available at www.azstarnet.com/special/ growthresourcesAbout 600 people attended "Tucson Growth: Decision at the Crossroads," a forum on understanding growth in the Tucson region on March 14 at the University of Arizona's Student Union Memorial Center ballroom. We gathered 106 questions at the forum that we plan to answer on this page on subsequent Sundays. We are sorting the questions and asking speakers, panelists and regional officials for answers. Today we offer two views of the forum itself. Links to reports and analyses on growth are available at www.azstarnet.com/special/ growthresourcesThe Star-convened "Tucson Growth: Decision at the Crossroads" forum reminded me of a recent Heartland Institute global-warming-deniers conference that brought the few remaining skeptics together for the climate equivalent of Custer's last stand.Everyone is aware most global-warming skeptics are sponsored by industry. So why are they effective in sowing doubt, confusion and delaying action? Perhaps because this is what peo ple want to hear? That everything's fine; nothing needs changing; ignore the man behind the curtain.The growth forum presented an impressive lineup of growth cheerleaders, whose mission was to repeat the myth until it's accepted without question, that there's nothing we can do about growth's "inevitability." Our only option is the manner in which it's accommodated.Studiously ignored is that growth is what you get when that's what you plan for; that there are legal means to put constraints and even moratoriums on growth that U.S. courts have upheld.Further indications the forum's agenda was to ram growth down our throats: No alternative voices were heard; no options were mentioned that don't protect a growth economy that is quickly consuming the planetary resources necessary to support life.It needn't be this way. Relocalization and steady-state economics are viable alternatives which work together to equitably improve quality of life — which the growth lobby has confused with standard of living. Some comments would be comical if this weren't a life or death matter for people and other ecosystem inhabitants.One speaker insisted that there's enough water in our dwindling aquifer to handle a 50 percent population increase. She called the rapidly diminishing Colorado River a "renewable resource" (as if this classification will by itself mitigate the effects of global heating on the disappearing snowpack in the Colorado's headwaters).Then she says we have to prepare for water scarcity. Of course, she's not addressing developers with this admission, but getting you and I used to the idea that to accommodate growth, we must accept drinking recycled water laden with hormones and pharmaceuticals. If you think your daughters are going into puberty years early now, just wait.Other speakers said we can't stop progress. However, launching yourself off the edge of a cliff is not progress, especially when flashing warning signs are posted along the edge, and the fence you have to climb is lined with barbed wire.If we're to live up to the assumption that humans are a rational species given a gift called intelligence, a step backward is a sign of progress.Another speaker stated that people move because they're seeking increased opportunities. This seems perfectly logical. Except this unsupported assertion was refuted by a survey commissioned by Seattle papers. Most people said they moved because they were "fleeing" areas destroyed by overdevelopment. Not badly or inadequately planned development, but overdevelopment.Besides denial that growth beyond a certain point is uneconomic and unhealthy, many of the speakers also seemed confused about the difference between vision and fantasy.Of course, this isn't what growth proponents want to hear. But as Albert Einstein remarked, the truth does not cease to exist because it is ignored.About 600 people attended "Tucson Growth: Decision at the Crossroads," a forum on understanding growth in the Tucson region on March 14 at the University of Arizona's Student Union Memorial Center ballroom. We gathered 106 questions at the forum that we plan to answer on this page on subsequent Sundays. We are sorting the questions and asking speakers, panelists and regional officials for answers. Today we offer two views of the forum itself. Links to reports and analyses on growth are available at www.azstarnet.com/special/ growthresources
