Cadillac Desert Response:
Cadillac Desert: “Mulholland’s Dream” chronicled the growth of a thriving civilization in the great American desert, the sometimes violent resistance to this achievement, the abundance it has brought, and the risk it has created home and abroad.
In your response, you will need to chronicle the major events that took place in leading up to/and during the process of this major engineering feat. What do you think were the three most crucial turning points (justify your reasoning)?
Do you think that there is any way L.A. could be somewhat close to how it is today if history had been different, (no aqueduct)? Did the events that took place lay the groundwork for some of societies current views on ecosystem capital usage? Or do you believe these views inevitable?
How did the final events leading up to the powerhouse development of L.A. shape our (societies) views at that time in reference to a “predestination” approach to ecosystem capital?
This is an opinion response with a scaffolding framework of historical facts. There is no specific format that is required. I assume it will take at least a ½ to chronicle events, and the rest to parley your opinion, and justify your reasoning.
I do expect that you cite at least 2 outside sources in your response.
Your response is due Tuenday December 13th by 11:59 pm.
To this day, the Cadillac Desert remains a haughty debated topic. And while many argue both for its benefits and against its implication, I have found that the situation itself is not so black and white. In fact, with a subject as profound as this one, the gray area are where most of my questions stem from. Within the documentary, it is mentioned that the West has relied heavily on the manipulation of water. A fact that, before this film, never occurred to me. Being right along the shoreline, I did not see why the ocean could not be used as a resource for water consumption. However, it is quite clear to me now that water is not chosen simply based on proximity. Which is why, when Los Angeles ran out of their water supply, they outsourced to Owen’s Valley. At this point, I began to wonder why no one in Owen’s Valley tried to object to the almost parasitic relationship. It was later explained that at that time, people did not understand what it meant to have water rights. And the few that possessed them were not educated enough to maintain them. It made me wonder, and fear, what would have happened if someone were to monopolize water. Furthermore, the Cadillac Desert documentary talked of a man named, William Mulholland. Mulholland was responsible for building the infrastructure to provide the water supply to Los Angeles, and helped to make it what it is today. However, while Mulholland knew what he wanted to achieve he was not skilled enough in the sustainability of his work. Eventually, the dam which he had created burst and hurt multiple communities around the area. William Mulholland’s failure was a turning point for many in the Los Angeles area dealing with the water crisis. It is unfortunate to know though, that it takes the death of many and the mistake of one man to finally make a city rethink their actions.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the area of Los Angeles was always inevitable, but I do not believe that its popularity could have been made possible without the manipulation of water. Los Angeles, California has always been admired for its warm weather and tropical atmosphere; all while simultaneously being located in a big city. But without the availability of water, the city is no better than one found in the mid-west. The only real difference is that instead of dust bowls and farmland, Los Angeles has palm trees and Hollywood. And sadly, because of its success and ridiculous influence in our country, Los Angeles is now seens as a benchmark for many other cities. Therefore, I believe that the misdirection of resources will always be found in our world so long as we continue to condone it. I just hope that the people of the Los Angeles area have learned from William Mulholland’s disaster, and that it does not take more deaths to realize the issue at hand.
It is my understanding that predestination is the belief that God has predetermined who will receive salvation and who will not. Sometimes the term is used to refer not only to salvation, but to express the idea that God is in control of the universe in general, even over mundane things. After watching the Cadillac Desert documentary though, I cannot help but assume this idea is a bit far fetched. Clearly if it was in God’s plan to have California fail, they would have done so by now. But rather than accept a fait they did not agree to, people living in Los Angeles chose to challenge it. And while I do not condone the reallocation of resources or the uprising of Los Angeles, I do believe that we are all capable of making decisions. Therefore, so long as a choice does not harm another human being or community, I believe that free will should be exercised when applicable (but should always respect compromise).
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16XpMZKojkW-_s72AIuanQVq1rUxFmH9HLj-YvzAt1_8/edit?usp=sharing
ReplyDeleteDue to the rapidly growing population that Los Angeles faced in the early 1900s, the creation of the aqueduct was inevitable. The population was growing faster that the water available was, and there wasn’t enough to sustain the city that Los Angeles would become. While of course it was built to bring water to the people of Los Angeles, it was also a way for many people with knowledge of the situation to make money. The buyers of the property were able to manipulate the owners of the land in Owen’s Valley with little knowledge on water rights to sell them their property. This caused many people of wealth and power to now be behind the idea of the aqueduct, as they knew the building of it would bring them tremendous profit for the land that they had bought. Another driving factor to this aqueduct was the portrayal of it by the Los Angeles media. They made it come across as a miracle, and that the people of Los Angeles should feel blessed for this water that they are now being provided. This caused almost all of Los Angeles to be behind the idea of building it. Since most people didn’t have much knowledge on the environmental impact that the aqueduct would have, it was easy for them to get behind it. Overall, I believe that the support that it had, from both the powerful people and everyone else, caused the aqueduct to be inevitable.
ReplyDeleteWhile the events that occurred in Los Angeles were harmful to the environment, I don’t believe that it could be the city it is today without them. In the documentary, it seems to state the aqueduct as a decision almost made on impulse. This kind of quick thinking with the neglect for the environment caused people to stay put in Los Angeles during its time of growth. If people were to have been leaving during this period of time, then I believe that it would have seriously stunted the growth of this city. According to thisbigcity.net, during the time the aqueduct was built (around 1960), was in the middle of the largest growth period in Los Angeles. Not having water would have stopped this growth, and caused Los Angeles to not be the city that it is today.
I believe that these events did shape how we view ecosystem capital usage drastically. We were able to see first hand both the environmental and political consequences for abusing a natural resource, and it only makes sense that most people would not want to repeat this history. I also believe, however, that the more educated we get as a society, the more concerned we become with how we are treating the environment.
Looking back on it, it seems that most people would agree that Los Angeles becoming the city it is was inevitable, especially after acquiring a water supply to support the city. According to localhistories.org, the amount of immigrants and Americans moving into Los Angeles almost seemed irreversible, and since they weren’t going to leave, Los Angeles was forced to adapt.
William Mulholland had a clear goal, he would make sure that the city of Los Angeles had enough water. When L.A. was starting to grow, he, being the superintendent for the L.A. water system, tried to make people in L.A. conserve enough water so that they wouldn’t use up the small Los Angeles river near them. The city was growing too fast, and soon the river would be sucked dry. Mulholland decided that instead of trying to conserve the little water that L.A. had, he would find a new water source. And he did. He secretly bought up 95% of the water rights of the Owens River and built a massive aqueduct to supply L.A. with plenty of water. This was the first major turning point because the construction of this aqueduct was really what caused L.A. to grow so fast. The second turning point was when the San Francisquito dam burst. The disaster was so big that is caused Mulholland to resign but his dream of bringing water to L.A. continued on without him. L.A. continued to rapidly grow. The third turning point was when Mono Lake was drained 40 feet. This drainage caused L.A. to take notice of potential environmental impacts of taking water and started many efforts to conserve water.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think that Los Angeles would be nearly as big of a city if there was no one to take that first step and build the aqueduct. There was no water in L.A. and you can’t sustain a city without water. Even if people kept coming to Los Angeles, they would have to conserve a lot of water or the city would have to have a size limit. I think our views on ecosystem capital were inevitable and would have happened eventually. Even if the aqueduct wasn’t build, we would have to run into some shortage eventually and then we would realize the value of the environment.
Predestination is a similar term to fate or destiny. Previous views before L.A. were that you went where the resources were. If they ran out, you would just move somewhere else. But When the aqueduct was built all that changed. The aqueduct show the citizens of L.A. and the world that humans now had the ability to move the resources to them. There was not much but desert in Los Angeles but the aqueduct brought water and created a giant city out of almost nothing. L.A. didn't have a destiny of growth but now it does and people realize that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~martins/hydro/case_studies/cadillac_desert.htm
In my opinion, Los Angeles wouldn’t be the city it is today without the built of the aqueduct. Mullholand has a vision to turn the San Fernando Valley into a vast city that could support million.s To achieve this he needed a major source of water. Up until 1903, L.A. was reliant on the Little Los Angeles River as its water source. However, during 1903 this river was sucked dry by the usage of L.A. and L.A. was forced to find another water source, if it wanted to keep growing. L.A. then sought out the water from Owen’s Valley and in 1905 the plans for an aqueduct were put in place. The people of Owen’s Valley didn’t like their water being taken so often they tried to destroy the aqueduct. From this resistance and the ever growing Qualities of L.A., water city officials had too seek out more and more supplies of water. A new aqueduct was built in 1936 from Mono Lake. But La kept growing and another aqueduct was built during 1970 coming from Mono Lake. This enormous amount of water required by L.A.’s growth stated to effect the lakes the aqueducts were linked to. By 1982, Mono Lake had dropped 45 feet in water and had become 4x as salty (Coast to Coast). Results and changes like this, made La finally realize they had to stop growing as a city because the water demands were just not possible. All of these events molded L.A into the city it is today. If no aqueducts had been built, L.A. wouldn’t have expanded into the large city it is today because of lack of water.
ReplyDeleteI believe events that took place during L.A.’s expansion has laid some background fro how society views ecosystem capital usage. We can see the major consequences that come from over use of an ecosystem capital and how when you change one aspect of it, several other are changed as well. For example, taking the water from Owen’s Valley turned Owen’s Valley into a dried, desolate city, when it had once been a very fertile agricultural town. While I believe we, as a society, have seen how dangerous it is to over use an ecosystem capital, I don’t believe it has really done much to change how we use certain resources. We often know that eventually bad aspects will come of us exploiting ecosystem capital, like mining for oil, but we don’t want to focus on those consequences until they are big and in our face. I believe that our views on ecosystem capital usage is we want to conserve the resource but at the same time we want to make a profit, leading to the over exploitation of the ecosystem capital.
The literal definition of predestination is “the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul”(Wikipedia). Coming from the point of L.A.’s growth, I believe that L.A. was made from the start to use up ecosystem capital. Before L.A. became a city, the San Fernando Valley was a dry desert not meant to sustain land. Those who designed L.A. knew that water would have to be brought in from somewhere else to sustain this city and life. The creators of L.A. wanted this city to be expansive and grow to be an enormous city. They knew when they made the plans for the city and it’s future that it would require a lot of water from an outside source.
Coast to Coast http://www.kahncious.net/discover/mono.htm
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SzlwNhHPe7jbFE8o2SA7-8fP_rXuPFAprDvnq-LAwm0/edit?usp=sharing
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~martins/hydro/case_studies/cadillac_desert.htm
https://asunow.asu.edu/content/cadillac-desert-withstands-test-time-technology
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19Wv9L-9Pp8SbjlJ5yXNNUXjxw9JiAQbz1iTywGEFlps/edit?usp=sharing
ReplyDeleteBy the 1920’s LA county was the most productive farming county in America. But when they ran out of their water supply, they needed to find an alternate water resource to feed into the county. The LA county water official, Mulholland, drew up a plan to began outsourcing their water supply from Owens Valley via an aqueduct. When Owen’s lake dried up and the aqueduct was turned off, LA officials decided that LA county and Owens valley could not coexist, and they bought the remaining water rights to Owen’s Valley. Residents of Owen’s Valley were outraged and protested by blowing up parts of the aqueduct with dynamite. They had previously been unaware that they had “water rights”, and were furious that their water had been stolen. After the aqueduct was turned off, the St. Francis dam was constructed in the Owen’s Valley river to contain the water for LA. A small leak was found, but was deemed safe, and left untouched. Of course, this became a major issue when the dam collapsed without warning and wiped out entire communities. At this point, Mulholland resigned. What I found most interesting and confusing about this story was that Mulholland, the man behind the planning of the aqueduct never even finished grade school. So, while his ideas were good and kept the best interest of the citizens of LA county in mind, he didn't have any education on the things needed to create a sustainable water source. This was a major problem because once the city of LA started growing rapidly, there became an even greater need for water, and outsourcing from Owen’s valley wasn’t sustainable.
ReplyDeleteWithout the aqueduct, I don't think the city of LA would be where it is today. The reason the city grew so rapidly in the early 1900’s is because counties surrounding LA county were running out of water, and the citizens realized that that would need to move to LA to have enough water. In addition to the city having enough water, the warm climate, ocean views, relaxed, vibe and hollywood were also major draws to the city, but those all would mean almost nothing if the city didn’t have water to supply for its citizens. I think we learned a lot about abusing natural resources from the aqueduct, and those lessons have somewhat influenced ecosystem capital. When the dam burst, it killed as many people as the San Francisco earthquake, which is more than enough to make the people of california not want to repeat history.
Predestination: previous determination as if by destiny or fate. I think that the people of LA were destined to use up ecosystem capital. Before the aqueduct, LA was bone dry. It has always been known that in order for LA to grow and expand there would need to be an alternate water source brought in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Aqueduct#Aqueduct.27s_Influence_on_Los_Angeles_and_the_County
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/predestination
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z8rr2gdE5aVrZaLB_I9guc8VIWiadyeQn5Hxm8nDucw/edit
ReplyDeletehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1lpd8zZ131upxceWef92IqDLukMsyFCSs7Cu35E-q1AM/edit
ReplyDeleteP.S. sorry if my food sucks tomorrow but I hope you believe in the term "A for effort" :-)
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ReplyDeleteLos Angeles was a growing town and by 1903 it’s only source of water, the L.A. river, was dry. This meant that the city could not grow any longer. The nearby Owen’s valley held the Owen’s river that was very large and was filled by snow run-off from the Sierra Mountains. William Mulholland, the head of the Los Angeles Water Department, had the idea to divert the Owen’s river hundreds of miles through an aqueduct to Los Angeles. This turned Owen’s valley into a desert destroying the agricultural land in Owen’s valley. The people who lived in the valley were angry, but could do nothing since the city of L.A. bought nearly all the land surrounding the Owen’s River. L.A. continued to grow and now needed another water source. Mr. Mulholland came up with a new idea. He was going to build a reservoir with the construction of the St. Francis Dam. This worked until 1929 when the damn broke and hundreds of lives were lost and millions in property damage. To satisfy Los Angeles’s need for water a second aqueduct was built feeding off of the Colorado River. As time went on environmental issues rose surrounding Los Angeles’s hunt for water therefore inhibiting their ability to tap distant water sources.
ReplyDeleteI think the three crucial turning points were when Mulholland built the original aqueduct from Owens valley, when he bought the water rights for most of the Owen’s river, and when the dam failed. The construction of the original aqueduct from Owens valley was significant, because it showed the world that it was possible to transport water from hundreds of miles away. The purchasing of the Owen’s valley water rights by the city if L.A. was significant, because it demonstrated the power of the city compared to rural communities and the tenacity that the city had to divert more water sources to L.A. The collapse of the dam was crucial turning point, because it showed flaws in Mulholland conquest for water and the general ridiculousness of the L.A. water situation.
If L.A. did not have the aqueduct I do not think it could be anything like it is today. How could Los Angeles grow to the size it is today without enough water to sustain its growing population. Their simply would not be enough water to sustain one of the largest cities in America. I think the events did lay the groundwork for societal views on ecosystem capital usage, because Mulholland demonstrated the power of man to control nature. He showed people that we can manipulate ecosystem capital to our advantage in ways that seem impossible.Even without Mulholland I do think that this mindset is inevitable, because I think it is in the very nature of man to feel dominate over his surrounding. I am confident that if Mulholland wouldn’t have pulled of such a huge feat of ecosystem capital manipulation then someone else would. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened in L.A., but it is too lucrative to not be done by someone else.
The final events leading up to the powerhouse development of L.A. shaped our societal views surrounding ecosystem capita in reference to “predestination”, because it proved that human society was capable of controlling and manipulating ecosystem capital. Mulholland’s actions reinforced the idea that earth’s resources are here to be taken to our advantage, because they belong to us. He helped societal views by proving that ecosystem capital is man’s to control and can be manipulated by man for his advantage.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Mulholland
http://www.city-journal.org/html/california%E2%80%99s-water-wars-13400.html
Los Angeles began to grow, and as it did so did its need for water. Los Angeles, not being a major body of water, was in a bind as it did not have a sustainable water source. A brilliant idea at the time, William Mulholland–only having received an elementary school education–brought water to Los Angeles in the form of an aqueduct. He got this water from the Owens River in the Owens Valley. Unforeseen by many, the Owens Valley dried up while the Los Angeles Community thrived. When the population continued to grow past this level of water, Los Angeles had to pull water from the Colorado River. As environmental concerns grew, Mulholland was no longer considered a savior.
ReplyDeleteThe first turning point occurred when Mulholland was put in charge of an aqueduct. Being only of an elementary school education, I was bewildered that he was the main engineer on such an impactful project. The second crucial turning point was when the Owens Valley dried out. Listening to the residents of it reminisce about how beautiful the Valley used to be and how much they disdained Mulholland began the shift towards Mulholland's decline. The final crucial turning point was when the the Dam that Mulholland had built broke, taking many lives with it. As Mulholland's fall from grace was highlighted, so was the lack of engineering prowess in the Los Angeles area.
Los Angeles would not be the thriving (smoggy) metropolis that we see today without that first aqueduct. While it was growing at the time, it lacked a body of water to fulfill its population's needs. Without the necessary water, the population would slow down as living conditions would become worse throughout the city until Los Angeles was no longer an appealing place to move. The movement to urban cities was apparent during this time, but Los Angeles would not have been as urbanized without the aqueduct. The lessons about ecosystem capital usage were inevitable. If Los Angeles hadn't made this water usage mistake, someone else would have. Other people have indeed learned from Los Angeles' mistake.
I believe that "pre-destination" plays a role in our societal views surrounding ecosystem capital. Especially in this case, Mulholland may have believe that Los Angeles was pre-destined to become the city it is now, so using any ecosystem capital to get it there was necessary. I believe in pre-destination in this case because everything that happens in the world happens. It happens based on what we do, but isn't what we do also pre-destined then?
A growing population in Los Angeles and increasing need for water in the 1900’s led to what I believe was an inevitable of an aqueduct. The diminishing availability of water combined with an increasing population created a situation where the growth of the city depended on creation of a new water source. While the mission was an amazing technological feat, it also became heavily involved in manipulative business practices and money. Those who purchased property were able to take advantage of farmers that did not know about their water rights and how this may affect them. This idea of making money became a strong fuel for this project. Not only would the potential for a booming city be in sight, but the ability to make money the whole way through the process was attractive for businessmen at the time. This was a major turning point because it was the moment when these businessmen and entrepreneurs figured out that there was a lot of money to made through this project. The next turning point was mostly due to the portrayal of the idea of an aqueduct. The Los Angeles media portrayed the idea of water being moved to from the Owen’s Valley as a miracle. Nearly everyone got on board, bring even more support for the project from all over. This gave the project the positive message that could overshadow the impact of manipulation and money. This also allowed a $1.5 million bond to be passed to fund the project (www.history.com). I believe the third turning point was when the dam collapsed in the Owen’s valley, leaving entire communities decimated. The impact of this event was huge for Mulholland. It left him broken, causing him to resign from his position. Unfortunately, it took the lives of nearly 600 live, 108 of which were minors (wikipedia.org), to really think about the scale and impact of this project.
ReplyDeleteI do not think that anything even close to the magnitude of present day LA would be possible without the manipulation of water. I think a smaller, more water conscious community would be possible, but nothing near the size of LA today. I definitely believe that LA set a precedent for what we can and what we will do to produce the community that we want. It's hard to imagine such a big, impactful task like what was done in the Owen’s Valley, but the fact that we did it means that we could go to similar lengths to expand a city. However, I also think we have come to realize the very real consequences of something of this scale, which has shaped how we approach water related issues and ideas.
Looking back at the development of LA, I think that this project was predestined to occur due to the dedication and overwhelming support for its mission. This project sparked a realization that we not only could create a community on our terms, but that there were very few physical barriers that could get in out way. LA was predestined to take up water at a high rate, which led to the adaptation of our thinking regarding what we could do with the resources around us.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Mulholland
http://www.history.com/topics/los-angeles-aqueduct
The aqueduct in Los Angeles was inevitable, there population was rapidly growing and their water supply was rapidly diminishing. The Los Angeles river didn’t stand a chance it was quickly sucked dry, but Mulholland came to the rescue. The people of LA backed the idea of the aqueduct, obviously, they needed some H2O, with a huge population and the medias support the aqueduct was going to happen. I don’t believe that most people even knew what Owens Valley was. Owens valley was going to be hit hard. The “water rights” were sneakily bought, this purchase and the introduction of the pipeline was the first turning point since it shifted the way the way the city of LA received water forever. A question arises of why Owen Valley didn’t protest as much as they probably should have. In their defense, they did blow up small portions of the pipeline. Soon after these sabotages on the precious pipeline, they decided to make St. Francis dam, to contain all their precious water. A huge turning was when this dam collapsed in 1929 and hundreds of people died this uncovered the obvious flaws of Mulholland’s plan, that was the end of him. But LA still needed clean water so in 1970 another aqueduct was built from Mono Lake. A lake can only hold so much water and LA finally realized that during the late 1900’s. I think that the tragedy of Mono lake was the third turning point. The lake dropped 45 feet and had become 4x as salty. Mono lakes ecosystems were forever destroyed and this was around the time that the population of LA realized they shouldn’t be exploiting and should probably start conserving.
ReplyDeleteThere is no way LA could be close to where they are at today without their massive exploitation of water. You can’t sustain a city with no water, especially one in a warm, tropical climate. It’s the nature of America to exploit things they shouldn’t exploit. If the water wasn’t exploited in LA, eventually it would be exploited somewhere else and those people would deal with the consequences. That certain government would need to make laws to conserve their resources. I believe that the events in LA in the 1960’s quickened the talks of conversing the environment but these ideas were inevitable, something else would have been exploited and we would be in the same spot.
Predestination is a fancy word, so I found the synonyms are fate and destiny. I believe that once the first people moved to that land in California, they were destined to exploit resources, there is no way to live without exploiting resources in that location. Once the people figured out how to get receive that ecosystem capitol the city of LA grew on the basis that they would need water from far away. It was fate that turned a relatively small aqueduct into the second most populous city in the United States, within a lifetime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Aqueduct
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Francis_Dam
http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/predestination
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ReplyDeleteWater plays an essential role in the history of Los Angeles. There are, I believe, really four key turning points in the growth of LA that Cadillac Desert talked about. The first was engineering the Owens River to provide water for the city after the Los Angeles River was drained dry. Mulholland built an aqueduct completed in 1913, running over 200 miles, to distribute the river’s water throughout the city of LA. By then the population of LA was about 300,000, but the city was rapidly growing, and access to water would always be in question-- this was the beginning of the California Water Wars. The next major turning point was when movements of resistance to the aqueduct peaked in 1924, when residents of the Owens Valley, seeing their farms depleted of water, opened the flood gates and let the water rush back to the river’s natural place in the valley. Mulholland wanted to buy out the farmers of the Owens valley to eliminate the resistance, and so as the city bought more water rights to the Owens River, farmers were pushed out as they couldn’t afford to stay. This sparked some controversy over the aqueduct, and finally brought some light on the negative impacts this great engineering feat had on the environment. What came next was the building of the dam because Mulholland needed a place to store the water from the aqueduct. But when the dam broke down, billions of gallons of water flooded nearby towns and drowned hundreds of residents. This event forced the Los Angeles Aqueduct to be extended further north, to Mono Lake, diverting water from the lake to the downtown. Mono Lake’s ecosystem was threatened and environmentalists began taking notice. They fought the city and through litigation, compelled LA to stop draining the lake. This turning point triggered the conservation of water movement among the residents of Los Angeles.
ReplyDeleteI don’t believe that LA would be the same city it is today if the aqueduct had not been built. It would not have expanded as rapidly or as greatly because of the limiting resource of water. The aqueduct was a great engineering enterprise, yet it caused major social and environmental problems for the city. Los Angeles has proved an example of the exploitation of ecosystem capital and the implications that go along with it. By the 1980’s, Los Angeles had actually become a national leader in the conservation of water, by developing innovative programs across the city. I believe that Mulholland designed the Los Angeles Aqueduct with the best of intentions-- to develop the city and foster prosperity. But once he became greedy, he abused the resources available to him, and that eventually led to collapse. We have seen this repeated in history time and time again. The city of Los Angeles is an example for other societies to now recognize as the exploitation of ecosystem capital. The city is still prosperous today, but has faced enormous challenges in the past because of where it was built, and is once again dealing with a water shortage.
Every time the water ran dry, LA turned to another source. The way that I understand this last question, is to mean that a society is “predestined” to be or not to be because of ecosystem capital. Because of the development of LA, societies weren’t viewed as being predestined because of ecosystem capital. Los Angeles was built on a desert, and is now the second largest city in the United States. LA engineered the redistribution of water to supply the ecosystem capital it needed to grow and thrive. But the social, political, economic, and environmental problems it faced tell me that societies should be. And I think that it is more widely acknowledged now, that societies, or cities, shouldn’t work where there are not enough resources to not even sustain it, but build it. Because sustainability can be taught or learned more easily than the reconstruction of resources.
Sources:
Deletehttps://books.google.com/books?id=6ZAZU_2bdR8C&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=predestination+ecosystem+capital&source=bl&ots=GGWeaQpP3y&sig=5PgOzh0F0InnRH1kgfrBWGZZOpU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj98M6fn_PQAhVQzGMKHZ7UDeUQ6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=predestination%20ecosystem%20capital&f=false
http://www.history.com/topics/los-angeles-aqueduct
https://docs.google.com/a/apps4pps.net/document/d/1UzLRQ9mb9Sm74XbGDwjWyWlREXq7tOsY3oLp5hFeXUQ/edit?usp=sharing
ReplyDeleteThe engineering and construction of the aqueduct was, in my opinion, unavoidable for many reasons. First of all, Los Angeles was beginning to become booming metropolis at the start of the twentieth century. Therefore once efforts had been made to outsource water to quench the thirst of its rising population, there was no turning back to resources derived naturally from the land around LA. Secondly, I believe that Mulholland was under a lot pressured from the society around him to keep creating unimaginable engineering feats. Of course this is not an excuse and he could have easily backed out from this disaster, but it was definitely a factor in the creation of this over the top water source engineering project. Mulholland was treated as a sort of “water god” and under this pressure, it would be very difficult to step down from this position or worse-hurt the city of Los Angeles, by not providing adequate, which he loved. According to History.com, LA was hit with a severe drought early in Mulholland's efforts. This drought increased the need for more reliable water ten fold.
ReplyDeleteIn no way could LA become one of the biggest cities like it is today without water brought into the booming metropolis of a city from another location. If there was no aqueduct, the city would be unable to provide its citizens with the subsistence most crucial to life; water. Los Angeles is basically an artificial city because without this false sense of security of water, there would be no city in the middle of a large desert that stretched from California to Mexico. I believe that sense the original aqueduct in LA was one of the first instances of man using the natural environment to his advantage and creation, it has completely shaped how we perceive land and how we use it. Although there were failures with Mulholland’s, St. Francis Dam, dam when it burst in 1928, LA was able to continue to use water from other sources to its advantage. It shaped the world’s views on the environment and how we can shape it to our advantage by become one of the largest cities in the world without a natural, local water source.
Throughout watching Cadillac Desert, I found it ironic that the events in the documentary strengthened the citizen’s views on predestination in regard to ecosystem capital. This is ironic because the people fought the natural characteristics of the ecosystem throughout the entirety of history. If people were honestly “predestined” to the financial gains of an ecosystem, they would not have to avert all the ways the environment uses to protect itself.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/occasions-i-envy-dead-st-francis-dam-disaster-180954543/
http://www.history.com/topics/los-angeles-aqueduct