Why California?
This is a question that’s been floating around in my head for a while: Why California?
As in, why is California home to the tech industry, Hollywood, many top-tier universities, lots of influential thinkers and writers, the country’s most environmentally progressive laws, and an explosive start-up and entrepreneurial industry, among other things. I have to say that as a native Californian, it’s a comfort to be roaming the international blogosphere and see my home state mentioned so frequently.
I started asking this question because as I started to do more reading about business, sustainability, design and other things that interest me, it seems like a disproportionately large number of the interesting things I read about are happening in California. Granted, I’m tech-oriented and environmentally conscious so I think that’s a big reason why many things I read about are coming from California, but that still begs the question of why California is the center for these things in the first place.
A quick scan of California’s Wikipedia article gives many possible answers:
- 3rd largest state in the US
- Most populous state in the US
- Mediterranean climate
- Diverse geography
- Coastal geography
- Home to the largest agricultural industry in the US
- 10th largest economy in the world, if it was a country.
The metrics that make California notable in the global economy are well-known in the modern world. However, in Bill Bryson’s book, Made in America, he quotes an historian that explains that the native languages in California encompassed a diversity that surpassed that of the entire European continent. Now, I’ll be the first to agree that California’s diverse geography and climate may be the original source for our wealth and prosperity, but I doubt that this diversity in climate and geography can’t be matched by the entire European continent.
The fact put forward in Bill Bryson’s book makes me think that the answer to my question can’t be in the people here. The fact about native language variation makes me think that whatever people happen to be here enjoy a rare life of diverse culture and prosperity, that there must be something about this place that is the source for this, or makes this possible, for native people and immigrants alike.
I think the key to answering my question lies in the fact that California not only has diverse geography and climate, but something about this combination encourages specialization, niches, and therefore promotes biodiversity. From an ecological perspective, biodiversity is one of the world’s most valuable resources. Wikipedia defines it as “the variation of taxonomic life forms within a given ecosystem, biome or for the entire Earth.” Tropical places are often fountains of biodiversity because their climates allow for the construction of complex ecosystems with many trophic levels and niches. But California isn’t tropical. So how do we explain the fecundity of our state? Certainly, the relatively mild weather in California helps, but I think it is this combined with the huge variation in geography that accounts for the diversity here. If you drive the length of the state, you can drive through almost every climate zone from alpine to near tropical, mountain to coastal. This complexity allows an almost infinite number of ecological niches – which in turn leads to a high level of biodiversity.
And now the conceptual jump – I think that high biodiversity in natural ecosystems can be mirrored and reflected by an equivalent level of diversity in human enterprises, and I think that California is proof of that. The success that we Californians enjoy is just a continuation of success that other species in this area have been enjoying for millions of years. The biggest implication of this: we need to protect those other species to maintain our own success, as our wellbeing depends upon their survival. I think that’s a big issue for business in California to tackle, but I think it will be essential to our future as a state.
