Writing in October 2010, it seems as if the California economy is poised for a dip toward a major depression. The state spending is way down, the federal stimulus was meager and over, the unemployment is running out for millions, and job creation is lagging way behind the need. The inventory of unsold homes is huge, the number of unsuspecting buyers shrinking.

As the opportunities shrink, the folks who came here to work are leaving, and with them, a demand for rentals that is shifting the real estate market into a new mode.

You see, it turns out that the folks who came here from Asia and Latin America, were paying sales tax, rent (covering property taxes), and even income tax! Indeed, their economic activity accounts for an important marginal increment in government income, and their productivity is an important margin on the producer side.

While I'm concerned about the social issues of crime and welfare, as I've learned more from my work as a foster parent about the real story behind the safety net, my perspective has shifted a bit, my understanding grows, my concerns have new focus.

I'm more concerned than ever about the threat that uncontrolled immigration poses to our nation, to our national security--but it doesn't follow that I support blind Arizona type laws that have locals enforcing immigration laws.

One of my concerns is that the growth in power of the narco cartels is a threat to our way of life, and the profound corruption that they bring may spread even deeper into the underground here in California. Indeed our drug war has ensured their profitability, and de-funding the cartels is one way to mitigate their power.

Gangs now control important aspects of the California prisons, now holding over 330000 people. If California could reduce the prison population by only 50,000 individuals, strengthen the parole supervision process, and rationalize the enforcement of our drug laws, we could save enough to improve law enforcement against the gangs, improve the safety net for families, and strengthen our society.

The politicians who stir up popular anger against the weak turn the society from compassion to competition, from our values of equality and protection of rights, to mistaken worship of authority.

So we need to look around at the people in our community, and address the needs as we find them. That means we must provide food and shelter and basic medical care to the folks in our communities, strengthen education and our community cohesiveness.

If gangs are to become less important, then the Police must be responsible for protection of locals and even illegals should be treated with respect. When illegals have no access to protection from the police, they will often, of necessity, turn to groups within their community who can resolve grievances or provide protection and this may be a gang, often a branch of one of the two large organizations that have infiltrated our land.

We need to address climate change, as the world won't wait for the long promised but unlikely return of lower unemployment rates, or other Republican magic. Indeed the climate change will destroy our economy as it now operates, and we need to be about the construction of the next economy asap. Alternate energy sources are growing in California, reducing our need for fossil fuels and reducing our vulnerability to supply disruption by foreign governments or events. As California improves our sustainability, we become stronger and ready for the new environment.

We need to replant our forests, as climate change will reallocate climate zones faster than our ecosystems can adapt. The long view is that life will persist, it is only the impact on our society that I'm worried about, and the permanent loss of so many species of animals, plants and microorganisms that will make the world of our grandchildren so much poorer. We can often save a species by helping to preserve ecosystem niches, but we'll also have to assist in moving ecosystem niche communities to a new location where they can thrive in the new climate context that is comming as we sail past the tipping points and our climate moves into uncharted territory.

The changes to our economy are brutal, and we only have enough capital to do this adaption once, if we are fortunate and smart. To delay too long is to accept the loss of our watershed snowpack storage, to accept the rise of sea level and the loss of our ecosystem services and resources. Are we going to be smart enough to envision a sustainable society and to make it across the chasm to that place or are we going to squander our capital and human resources until profound poverty limits us to a new mode of civilization where we find ourselves unable to thrive, in desperate straights, with no way to do more than slide even further down, with massive poverty and a destroyed government just when we need our government to be functional?

Without a population that is educated in basic civics, basic communications skills and with math and science, history and art, sports and sustainability, natural systems knowledge and respect for each other, we can expect authoritarian rule, massive suffering, and a vulnerability to natural disasters and epidemics that can only increase the level of suffering beyond imagination. We can do better, and it is possible to envision a society in 2050 where the climate is shifting but we are adapting, where our economy is much more self sustainable, where our food supply is secure, and where our grandchildren are raising the next generation with hope instead of dispair.

Here's to hope, here's to a world where we respect our fellow beings, where we treasure the organisms that share our ecosystem, and to a society where we value our heritage, respect our community and each other, and where we have learned to operate our society at a more intelligent level. Here's to a society where science informs our behavior, where spiritual values are respected, where we question established doctrine, where understanding and compassion have as much force as authority.

The emergence of collective thought as the internet ties us together could be a force that moves us in that direction if we can keep it open enough that our collective intelligence is activated. Recent experience with manipulation of social systems by forces seeking to control the society so that exploitation can accelerate shows that this won't be an easy contest. Indeed the internet can be a force for control that has unprecedented reach, or it can be a tool to access collective resources that could enable us to adapt to the climate change in time.

As the Chinese proverb says "May you live in interesting times!"