GreenGranny

The Quandry of Growth versus the Environment: trying to find a way forward

Local politics started boiling over again, in my town.  The issue was whether to annex a parcel of adjacent land on the north side of town so that development could proceed with city services and especially,  city sewer lines.   Annexation would have guaranteed the protection of the watershed for the city's emergency drinking water, a  billion-gallon reservoir, by ensuring the sewer line hookups.  (See www.greenseniors.org "Green Hero Erv Klaas" for the story of the creation of Ada Hayden Heritage Park.)

My understanding is that the long term planning done by the city favored development in other directions for sensible reasons like cost to the city to provide services.  However, the country club and golf course are north.  The very reservoir needing protection, with its lovely park,  is north.  Hence, people able to afford luxury homes want to live north, and developers already own the land.  If homes are built there even with the best septic systems, the ground water will eventually get to the lake and cause eutrophication. 

For once, many environmentalists lined up with developers on the side of annexation, but the measure did not pass due to a 3-3 vote.   At least two of those dissenting were voted onto the Council by Smart Growth advocates who were in disagreement with some previous Council land use decisions.   Very likely, it may have been wise to compromise and vote for annexation, but it didn't happen, and the town is unhappy.

I am not an adversary of development, only of development as is commonly done today--move out to fresh farmland where construction is cheap and build such that private vehicles are the only means of transportation feasible.   Make dwellings with the largest environmental footprint imaginable.  Add some CFL bulbs and upgraded insulation and use Energy Star appliances, and call it green enough.  If only it were that simple. 

However, this is still overwhelmingly what Americans dream of having.  Lacking federal and/or state regulation, if developers want to stay in business,  they have no choice but to build for today's customers.  I should say, today's affluent customers.  My city needs more affordable housing but that need is mainly addressed by Habitat for Humanity.  Their noble efforts aren't quite to the scale needed.

I responded to a editorial in my local paper entitled "How Will This City Every Move Forward" with the following letter, printed today, July 20.  Excerpts are shown below with a few minor changes.   The newpaper editor seemed to think our city was going to hell in a handbasket for its lack of will to grow (as developers wished) and I wanted to counter with the good things we already have here.

"To the Editor:

The July 17 editorial column set forth a complex situation concerning possible city annexation of land to the north.  Disappointing? To some, certainly.  Disturbing?  Hardly.  Democracy is messy, but the alternative is forgetting about elected representatives applying their best judgment and letting the monied interests run the town.  I want Ada Hayden Heritage Park protected as much as anyone, but I can understand the differing viewpoints of council members...    

...Except for winter, this is one of the best places anyone could live, and I've lived quite a few places.  My neighborhood is attractive, safe, and friendly.  When I ride my bicycle around town, people I don't know wave to me and smile.  Motorists watch out for my safety.  There is an abundance of cultural and intellectual stimulation.  The people I know aren't so shallow as to care where I shop.  From my perspective, everything here is so easy.  Appreciate the goodness of our city that money can't buy."

Political gridlock is not unusual

In many ways, the gridlock characteristic of our present City Council is similar to the gridlock still apparent in Congress.  The question on both sides is "How will we ever move forward?"  It seems odd that Republicans and Democrats were both instrumental in establishing our nation's major environmental protection laws, keeping our cities from becoming Beijing-like.  I wonder, once the people there see the sun and breathe the air cleaned by the enforced shutdown of factories and traffic for the duration of the Olympics, how will they endure going back?  Why is Congress so unable to see the good these laws have brought to the US and continue legislation in the same vein?

I've started reading Bruce Babbitt's book "Cities in the Wilderness--a new vision of land use in America."  (Island Press, 2005)  It is instructive how some of the major land use victories--the ones that had a significant impact on preservation of entire ecosystems--came about.  In most cases, federal laws were the stick that brought property owners to the negotiating table, often with state governments pitching in.    

Regarding the expansion of land protection programs, Babbitt says progress may not come easily in the short run.  "History, however, instructs us that the trajectory of environmental protection is moving ever upward over time, even as the trend line occasionally breaks downward."  (pp. 95-96)

The trajectory may move upward over time, but its speed, or lack thereof, is cause for alarm.  The news of yet more of earth's ecosystems in rapid decline, or crashing, is as grave as every new piece of information on global warming.  Perhaps by the time the earth heats up beyond what any existing ecosystem can handle, humans will already have destroyed them.   Can we implement the tragedy of the commons over all of earth by greenhouse gas production, or will we trash the planet first?    For that is the race we are currently running.

As a nation, and as a city, we have to do better.  How will we move forward, indeed?

GreenGranny Goes to Caucus

Last night was a wonderful experience in democratic government.  My political party in Iowa uses a caucus format rather than a primary election to initiate the process of selecting a presidential candidate, making it rather like a town meeting.  Many people would perfer a faster and more efficient process such as the other major party uses, but I found it inspiring to come together, to see my precinct gathered in one place, to interact.

The turnout was just amazing.  Our precinct was assigned to the high school auditorium while smaller precincts in our section of town used other areas of the school.  The other party required much less space because they could vote and leave immediately.

My husband and I  left the house early and long lines of cars were already creeping along streets towards the school.   It was a crisp January night, very cold but still.   The spacious parking lot was filling up.  Inside we signed in and took seats, then waited nearly an hour for everyone else to get in.  There were many new party registrations and that delayed things a bit.   We kept glancing over our shoulder at the auditorium filling up behind us.  The doors had been closed to late arrivals at 7 p.m., but the new registrants were allowed time to fill out their paperwork.

The entire thing was run by three grandmothers. Well, I don't know for sure if they were grandmothers, but they were senior women who have been volunteering in this way for decades. They knew how it was all supposed to work.  They were thrilled with the turnout even though, with over six hundred people filling every available seat, the size of the crowd was going to curtail the town meeting type of interaction. 

Besides those three in charge of the proceedings, there were precinct captains for each candidate along with teams of helpers. This group was decidedly youthful. They passed out paper badges with their candidate's name and greeted people as they filed in, trying to gain supporters from the undecided.  We put on the badge of our favorite candidate.

To get an accurate count of all present, we had to count off one at a time, row by row, all the way to slightly over 600.  But everyone witnessed that together.  The count is important because a candidate is "viable" only if he or she gets at least 15% of the total turnout.  Viability means earning at least one delegate to the party's county meeting, en route to the state meeting that finalizes the choice.   However, in practical terms, it is the winner of the day, for both parties, that is broadcast nationwide and has great impact on state primary elections soon to occur in other states.  It shows how one group of people, the people of Iowa, have reacted to the candidates after extensive opportunities to see and hear them and to know their positions, their style, and their substance.

Unlike any other caucus I have experienced, people were saying how much they liked all the candidates, how fortunate we were to be able to choose from so many worthy individuals. I was seated next to a woman who told me she was a speech professor, and that one of the things she and her colleagues were curious about was whether all the candidates were truly as eloquent as they sometimes appeared.  Would their performance in small groups, at the end of long days and grueling weeks of campaigning, resemble their debates and their television ads?  Her remarkable answer was that they had all proven to be consistently excellent.   She knew that eloquence of speech and the ability to communicate does not necessarily equate to successful governing, but it can't hurt.

My first choice in candidates was centered upon his stance on global warming.  Bill Richardson, the Governor of New Mexico, took positions one step better than all other candidates on a number of issues connected to energy and the environment.  I felt that he  had demonstrated his ability to govern and to achieve his objectives, and that he was exemplifying the right kind of leadership on the environment as a state governor.   In my view, this trumped the environmental messages of the other candidates of my party who had not been so positioned to prove they can follow through.

When Governor  Richardson was campaigning in Ames, he called me in person and left a voice message on my phone, which regrettably I missed!  He called in person to invite me because I was GreenGranny, because I had helped start Green Seniors-- fancy that!  When I finally got to hear him speak in Ames on a later visit, Governor Richardson asked me to pin a Green Seniors badge on him and we shook hands.   

When the state vote was tallied, it was, overall, a vote for change in both parties--a vote against Washington insiders or anyone even suspected of having the tendency to behave similarly.   Experience meant less to voters than change, particularly to the young voters that flocked to the caucus.  I was glad to see young people engaged in the process, and they were on fire for Barak Obama.   If this is how it plays out in the end,  well and good.  Let our new President inspire and motivate and mobilize the people, and let those like Bill Richardson enable the change.  In the end our political leaders are a team, and we are  interviewing them for the slot on the team that they will occupy.  We need all the talent and dedication that can be mustered for the challenges ahead.  State governors will remain key to eventual success, along with city mayors, cabinet members of the next administration, and others who turn the wheels of government.  Over time, perhaps even Congress will stop being so dysfunctional.

In the web page provided by the Des Moines Register comparing the positions of the candidates on major issues, global warming was a category. Not energy, not energy independence, not biofuels, but GLOBAL WARMING.  And the detail and substance shown there indicated most of the candidates had some sort of track record on the topic. 

At the end of the day,  the issues that unite us held sway, and the devisive issues of previous caucuses, of previous presidential elections, were mute, for the time being anyway.  Global warming has become one of the uniting issues.  That is a pretty good way to start off the new year.