California 's New Class Warfare

New Geography reports:

Radical environmentalism has been particularly responsible for driving wedges between California’s classes. Until fairly recently, as historian Kevin Starr says, California’s brand of progressivism involved spurring economic growth—particularly by building infrastructure—and encouraging broad social advancement. “What the progressives created,” Starr says, “was California as a middle-class utopia. The idea was if you wanted to be a nuclear physicist, a carpenter, or a cosmetologist, we would create the conditions to get you there.” By contrast, he says, today’s progressives regard with suspicion any growth that requires the use of land and natural resources. Where old-fashioned progressives embraced both conservation and the expansion of public parks, the new green movement advocates a reduced human “footprint” and opposes cars, “sprawl,” and even human reproduction.

The Bay Area has served as the incubator for the new green progressivism. The militant Friends of the Earth was founded in 1969 in San Francisco. Malthusian Paul Ehrlich, author of the sensationalist 1968 jeremiad The Population Bomb and mentor of President Obama’s current science advisor, John Holdren, built his career at Stanford. Today, more than 130 environmental activist groups make their headquarters in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and surrounding cities.

This long article is well worth your time.