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An apocalyptic story in Sunday's Star painted a picture of an enormously urbanized and traffic-choked Arizona that, by contrast, makes today's growth problems seem trivial.

The predictions referred to population growth and a boom in housing and commercial developments, and government's likely inability to deal with transportation demands that come with such growth over the next 30 years.

The crystal ball gazers believe the 13.3 million people now living in the densest parts of the state between Sierra Vista and Prescott will increase by 8 million in the next three decades.

Tucson and the rest of the state must do a better job of controlling and preparing for that growth than anyone has done with the growth spurts of the past.

Sunday's report indicates that nobody has figured out where Arizona will get enough water to accommodate the projected growth, or enough money to build the highways, commuter rail lines and other transportation amenities to accommodate 8 million additional residents.

If we look backward at what has occurred in one geographical piece of this terrain — namely at our own backyard in Tucson — we can see the debilitating consequences that future growth can bring.

In 1960, for example, Tucson was only 71 square miles and the population was roughly 213,000. In 1970, the city was a hair under 80 square miles and the population had jumped to 263,000, but that was pretty much the end of slow growth and may well have been the beginning of our region's inability to deal with that era's apocalyptic vision.

A quick look at census data and Tucson's annexations shows that in 1980 the city's population jumped to 330,500 and our borders expanded another 30 square miles. At that point Tucson was 100 square miles, about half of what it is today.

In the 10 years from 1980 to 1990, the population within the city jumped another 75,000. By March, 1990 we had spread across another 57 square miles.

Nowadays, Tucson's population is roughly a half million — the metropolitan region is double that — and the city limits stretch nearly 228 square miles.

What we have learned over the last 30 years is that we can ill afford to approach the future with as much disregard for long-term consequences as we did the past.

Growth that is unmanaged and uncontrolled has produced costly and potentially dangerous water problems and a transportation "system" that became a nightmare, in part because those who wanted convenience were disinclined to pay for it.

If the planners and demographic experts quoted in Sunday's story are accurate, in the next 30 years we can expect uninterrupted development from the southeastern part of the state all the way to Prescott Valley, 100 miles northwest of Phoenix.

Other planners look at expanding that diagonal from Sierra Vista through Prescott and on to Las Vegas, in "the sun corridor." It's the place attracting more and more people from California and the miserable climates in the Midwest and Northeast.

These predictions make it clear that Arizona cannot afford to be a retirement colony for the nation's non-visionaries. Tucson and other communities in the state often talk about the consequences of growth and sometimes look at places that seem to have dealt with the issue intelligently.

However, the major difference between Arizona and places that have actually taken an innovative approach to growth and transportation is a more environmentally-engaged electorate.

When Arizonans talk about quality-of-life issues, they typically refer to good weather and open spaces.

Rarely do we hear from large blocs of voters who are advocates for sustainable cities — places where water conservation becomes public policy, where higher densities are seen as a necessary antidote to sprawl, and where sprawl is understood as the antithesis of what makes a future possible in a desert environment.

The apocalyptic vision given us by various planners may not be 100 percent accurate, but it's probably close to what we will see. It is clear that we cannot use the last 30 years as model for how we can handle the next 30 years.

At least two ingredients are essential to Arizona's future.

First is a massive education program to create a society with a heightened awareness of what it means to live in a land of limited resources.

Second are leaders with the brains and personalities to convert the message of sustainability into policies that makes leap-frog development, wildcat subdivisions and unregulated private well-drilling obsolete.

If we prefer not to smother in Los Angeles pollution, we need political leaders who are prepared to accept the burdens of unpopular but necessary changes.