In 1960, California’s population was almost 16 million, and by 2020 it had peaked at a little under 40 million. It is now declining.

In 1960, California was 92% white, 5.6% black, and 9.1% Hispanic. (There is some overlap of categories.)

In 2020, California was 35% white, 5.6% black and 39% Hispanic. In the California context, Hispanic means Mexican and Central American.

By 1970, 25% of the country saw pollution/ecology as an important problem, up from 1% in 1960. That same year there were over 8000 environmental bills introduced in congress.

Did anyone ever try to build the timeline of the Great Watermeloning? I mean, at some point the Greens had to turn from “some weirdo idealists we rarely talk about” into something the usual ghoul wanted to exploit, then eat out and wear its skin — but how this went?

By and large it seems obvious that the U-turn from “asphalt everything, eat pills!” style nonsense all the way to “Alaska needs to designate a kangaroo preserve National Park to prepare for… (uh, how it’s even called this year, again?) horrors!” style nonsense was just a part of much larger and well-known process: overthrow of the Old (“Stalinist”) Left by the New (“Maoist”) Left.

Not unlike the antics of Mansons and other hippies (speaking of whom — of course, Hollywood had to be conquered somehow, and not overnight, too).

But a decent history of each front may be interesting, and the devil usually hides in details, too.

One potential answer is that the construction of net housing stock threatens the asset portfolios of all “investors” in real estate, direct or indirect, because the economic value of shelter is proportional to its scarcity. Relatedly, a fall in asset price level of just ten percent can drown the banks, unless quantitative easing is used to clear their balance sheets. Quantitative easing is when the Federal Reserve purchases assets at their face value (and not at their market value). Anything that lowers the price of real estate will destroy the economy for its constituents.