Natural Resources

A public meeting to get ideas on how to finish restoring natural resources damaged by the Feb. 7 oil spill will be held today from 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. and from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at City Hall, at Main and Yorktown streets. The session is sponsored by a coalition of state and federal agencies. Officials said the two sessions will solicit ideas from the public on what the state and federal agencies should do in pursuing claims from those held responsible for the spill.

While the West is staggering through a historic drought and choking on the smoke from dozens of drought-related wildfires, it seems the height of hubris for the super-rich to be building $3-million pools ["The Ultimate Cliffhanger," Aug. 16] and "water walls" ["Feeling as If Your Cup Runneth Over," Aug. 16]. The city is encouraging us all to install California-native landscaping so we who live here can reduce our water consumption to save some for the millions who don't live here yet.

Re "The wealth between our ears," Opinion, July 3 Jonah Goldberg claims that biologist Paul Ehrlich and 18th century British economist Thomas Malthus were wrong about the relationship between population and resources because "we're still here." The fact is, as virtually every qualified scientist will confirm, the Earth's resources are finite, and although one can argue about when a continuously growing population will result in disaster, there is no question that it eventually will.

At the Santa Monica Festival on Saturday, the city's eco-credentials were on full display. Children had a chance to operate the controls of a municipal recycling truck. Their parents could attend a seminar titled "Demystifying Recycling." There was information about energy-saving lightbulbs, community gardens -- and a novel approach to calculating how much of the Earth's natural resources one person uses.

By 2050, the planet's population will increase to 9 billion, with most people migrating to massive cities. Better vaccines will lessen the epidemic of HIV and offset flu pandemics. The global economy will quadruple. Demand for food, fresh water and raw materials for construction and heat will stretch natural resources to their limits, according to an analysis released Thursday.

Crying out against man's destruction of the natural environment, Pope John Paul II warned Tuesday that a global ecological crisis threatens not only the well-being of humanity but world peace as well. The Pope attacked greedy consumerism, the pillaging of natural resources and the "indiscriminate application of science and technology" as elements in a global crisis he said is moral as well as material.

With U.S. and global stock markets at or near record highs, many investors are beginning to ask the simple question: What if things go wrong when markets seem to be priced for everything going right? That has sparked the search by some investors for a "hedge"--an investment that might go up, or hold steady, if stock funds suddenly go down because of a jump in inflation and-or interest rates, or some international calamity. The problem is that hedges are hard to find for small players.

California's natural resources have suffered for the past 16 years under prior governors. Now, under Gov. Gray Davis, who promised to be a friend of the environment, the state's natural resources face yet another stingy budget. Even with a $4.3-billion surplus to draw on, Davis added relatively little to the resources budget, leaving it even smaller than the final outlay of Gov. Pete Wilson.

There is no shortage of frightening reports on the future of our planet making the rounds, but the granddaddy of sky-is-falling warnings came last week from the United Nations. In sum: Without radical changes, 1 billion of the world's poorest citizens will, within 50 years, be deprived of the fresh air, clean water and other basic natural resources they need to survive. The U.N.'