Visiting Sacramento in the summer always puts me in touch, once again, with what heat is all about. Temperatures are in the 90s up here now and broke into the 100s last week, so you try to get everything done early. Truly, only “mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon-day sun.” To live in Malibu is to live in a weather cocoon. It’s seldom too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry, more often than not just right — provided you reconcile yourself to constant summer good-weather traffic and an occasional weather calamity, although we haven’t had any the last few years.
The drought really shows when you drive north on Interstate 5 and you pass through miles and miles of brown fields. California is quickly becoming a patchwork quilt, one green field followed by one brown field, in a pattern that goes all through the Central Valley. When you hit Northern California, there seems to be plenty of water — maybe not as much as before, but the rivers are full and flowing. Recently, when we were on the East Coast, there also seemed to be plenty of water. If we can consider and finance an oil pipeline from Canada to the Southern USA, why can’t we put in a water pipeline from the wet East to the parched West? It couldn’t be more expensive than all of us going out and buying designer water in little plastic bottles. I could never figure how that mad genius came up with the idea of selling us water in those little plastic bottles. I’m sure when he first proposed it, people must have said, “You’re nuts. Who is going to pay you for something they already get for free?” I guess the answer was “all of us.”
On the home front, the Artifac Tree has a problem: Where are they going to go? I know that a number of you have been signing petitions to the Adamsons, but I think those petitions are misdirected. The Artifac Tree is an important social service and charitable organization, and it’s our city, not the Adamsons, who should be asked to do the heavy lifting. If we agree it’s an important institution and should be supported, then we should all step in and demand the city act. Sometimes we forget that the City of Malibu is the collective “us.” Let the city find space for the Artifac Tree and assist in the transition.
I’ve been following the stories in the media about the opening of an additional beach access on Carbon Beach and how that was a great environmental victory. This past week, I spent countless time looking for parking spots on the Pacific Coast Highway in the same area. I’m sure the California Coastal Commission considers that they opened the beaches to thousands, if not millions of ocean-hungry Californians. The reality is, they can open beach accesses all over the place, but my guess is the new access on Carbon means maybe an additional 12 cars can access the beach, and only if they get there very early, before the Nobu kitchen staff arrives and takes all of the parking spots.