Читать книгу The Atlas of California - Suresh K. Lodha - Страница 13

Earth, perhaps because the despoliation of our magnificent natural heritage has been more readily apparent than almost anywhere else. California has been a leader in the conservation movement since the days of John Muir and the founding of the Sierra Club. It led the way in the postwar era, with fights over oil spills and coastal reserves, dams and wild rivers, mountain resorts and wilderness areas, pesticides and farmworker protection, wetlands and bay fill, and much more besides. Today, California’s government has been among the few in the USA to take heed of global warming and to enact policies for energy conservation and carbon controls. Californians are leading the way in solar energy, electric vehicles, green buildings, and other technologies, and in trying to rethink the form of cities and means of transit, from the Smart Growth movement to the Critical Mass cry for bicycle-friendly streets. In short, it is possible for the people of California to change our current trajectory and to create a better future for this wonderful state. To do this, however, it is vital that today’s Californians face up to the shortcomings of the Golden State, putting aside the sunny myths of the California Dream, and weighing past successes against the many wrongs. We hope that this atlas can help awaken and prod the public to demand that state government and the powers-that-be do better. We make no pretense of neutrality; the facts presented here constitute a call to action on many fronts, from increased funding to public education to better control of water pollution. But wait! Is such advocacy a violation of the honest goals of a California atlas? Is an atlas not a neutral purveyor of facts and geographic orientation? Such is the prevalent fiction, but, as the history of geography shows, it is far from true. Of course, atlases are meant to inform, and they should do this in a manner as honest, elegant, and truthful as possible. Nevertheless, maps are a language like any other, in which the speakers pick and choose what they want to say, or what they want the reader to hear. The maps of the Southern California Automobile Association always feature freeways, the hard lines of orientation for Angelinos, but that is only one way of seeing Greater Los Angeles or Southern California. The vegetation map in Chapter 1 looks quite strange by comparison, until one gets used to it; soon the familiar patterns emerge that Southern Californians know well, if they have kept their eyes open. Other maps here may show unknown territory, such as prisons, inequality, or racial segregation, which we hope to make Californians more familiar with. So, dear readers, enter this atlas with eyes wide open, and see what wonderful things—and disorienting ones—await. Richard A. Walker Berkeley, May 2013 Suresh K. Lodha Santa Cruz, May 2013

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