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The Tsongas Committee - A Call
to Economic Arms « Chapter III The Environment
1992 Democratic Presidential Primary
The Tsongas Committee
 |
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| Chapter
III |
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A CALL TO ECONOMIC ARMS
Forging A New American Mandate
PAUL E. TSONGAS
lII. The Environment - Equilibrium With Earth
There has always been an environmental constituency. Unlike many interest groups its objective has historically not been its own economic well-being. Its goal has been the preservation of nature, a sense of being at one with the land and water and air and all the creatures which co-inhabit this planet.
That core environmental constituency has been a political bedrock, hundreds of thousands, indeed, millions of people, feeling very strongly about the legitimacy of their cause.
What is different about this issue in the modem day is the newly recruited battalions to the environmentalist army and the breadth of their concerns. The historic group (begun in large part by moderate Republicans) is sometimes dismissed as "tree-buggers." (It is ironic that someone's love of a tree could be viewed as a negative characteristic.) The modem coalition, however, involves people whose interests are much closer to home. It involves citizens who have been affected by toxic dump sites or air pollution or have come to fear the quality of the water they drink. These newly minted conservationists are going to be no less committed to the cause of environmental protection. Indeed, in many respects they bring a kind of passion that has been sometimes absent. A despoiled earth will not be tolerated by human beings depen-dent upon a clean earth for survival.
Now there is a third group in this coalition.
This group is largely a time-of-being phenomenon. It is the post-Cold War generation. If one sees generations in terms of time frames and definitive events, the progression in recent times arguably would be Depression/World War II, Cold War, and Vietnam/Civil Rights/Nuclear War.
When the Berlin Wall came crashing down, the spectre of East-West nuclear confrontation was rendered highly improbable. The young people now coming of age know, and will only know, the return of democracy to Eastern Europe and the centrifugal forces at play in a weakened Soviet Union.
An era has passed and with it much of the fear of a superpower caused nuclear winter.
As this generation analyzes the world in which it will mature and live out its years, it does not perceive a world of calm and quietude. It perceives other dislocations. And one of the most severe stems from the mindless abuse of our planet by generations focused on other issues. This new generation sees a world of possible climatic cataclysm, of a world buried in its own excessive trash, a world where the air they will breath will threaten the health of themselves and of the children they are beginning to bear. They see virgin forests of antiquity falling to greed. And they see population growth which threatens to turn the future of mankind into an endless series of bloody clashes over ever-limited resources.
Simply put, they sense global disequilibrium. The earth is not at peace with its inhabitants. We are consuming resources at a rate which is not generationably sustainable. We see population growth rendering third world cities dysfunctional. We are despoiling this mother spaceship and will eventually render it hostile to human well-being.
Our young think differently than we do. As we get older the time frame we think in shrinks because our remaining time on earth has lessened.
Not so the young. With their sense of their own immortality they can look out and see forever. A planet in disequilibrium is hazy to shortterm focused adults. It is alarmingly clear to our offspring. They know they will inherit the consequences.
I learned this lesson soon after the Valdez oil spill in Alaska. I was driving through Chatham on Cape Cod and noticed that I needed gasoline. Without much thought I turned into the nearest service station and pulled up next to the pumps. There came an immediate howl from my three children. I had stopped at an Exxon station. They demanded that I drive away.
My response to them was that this particular gas station owner had no responsibility for the oil spill. They rejected that argument as irrelevant. I was patronizing a despoiler of the environment. No more. No less. Their voices reached an insistent crescendo of righteousness and I decided to drive off to calm the din.
The incident troubled me. As the Senate co-author of the Alaska Lands Act, I have always seen myself as an ardent and committed environmentalist. I always saw myself as the defender of Alaska's wonders. My children, however, were beyond me in their sensitivity. How different from what I thought about when I was their age. They had become dedicated environmental activists and I had never noticed.
We should welcome their alarm. It calls us to a true stewardship of our environment. And such a stewardship is uniquely American. We are the continental nation. Descendents of Teddy Roosevelt and Ansel Adams. We should see this calling as returning home to what we are truly all about.
Specifically what?
International Leadership
It is appalling that we were the most notable footdraggers at the recent international convention on global warming. So much for George Bush being the environmental President. We must lead the charge for global conservationism. If not us, who? If not now, when?
Washington has true champions of the environment in the House and Senate and in the EPA. Let the White House use its influence to spread that commitment throughout the land and across this globe. Let the New American Mandate establish the principle that love of earth is mainstream America, a reflection of the best of us in all of us.
The vehicle for doing this would be to proclaim the goal of global equilibrium. This means the pursuit of policies and lifestyles that allow the consumption of resources to be consistent with having an inhabitable planet over the generations.
The issues here are obvious. Global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer are the most noted but they are merely the tip of the melting iceberg. These two issues deserve the highest level of attention and concern rather than the jittery avoidance that has characterized the Reagan-Bush years. I chaired the first hearings on global warming as a Congressman in June, 1977. It was an issue that was obscure to some, but all too relevant to those who testified. In the absence of any White House or media concern the matter remained dormant until the very hot summer of 1988. All of a sudden it was a topic of popular discourse. That is not how serious issues should be confronted. The White House needs to establish a national dialogue on the scientific data. Pretending that these matters are secondary is risking the lives of millions of people should they ever come to pass.
A Recycling Ethic
Ancient history is often marked by great events that took place at large feasts or simple small repasts. From the tales of Homer in ancient Greece to the beginnings of the world's great faiths, history was often made when people broke bread together.
But the archaeologists in the year 2991 will be able to unearth artifacts of millions upon millions of meals consumed in 1991. They need only go to the local landfill and dig a bit. There they will discover the true artifact of our time - the disposable, once used, plastic utensil. In addition, they will find all kinds of commodities specifically designed to be thrown away rather than repaired when they are broken.
The archaeologists of today are unable to find virtually any artifacts from those events.
The age of the disposable society must give way to the age of recycling.
Recycling must become as much an automatic personal habit as brushing one's teeth. Again, here, as in other issues referred to previously, it is a matter of mindset.
Such a mindset already exists. But its existence is inversely proportional to the age of the person. The young do not thoughtlessly dispose of aluminum cans into trash cans as do many of their parents. They want to collect them for recycling. There is great promise here. As a member of the Recycling Advisory Council, I am struck at how willing corporate America is to move in this direction. In many respects they are far ahead of the politicians. Much is happening. Americans instinctively want to be in harmony with their environment. A clear call for sustainable lifestyles will be received with great response. Let us sound that call.
Such a call has to be backed up by government procurement policies at the local, state and federal level that give real preference to recycled products. This will help to establish markets that are now often fledgling and vulnerable.
It means introducing a virgin materials fee. This would give recycled commodities only a slight economic competitive advantage over virgin products, but it would set a tone as to the need for manufacturers to rethink procurement practices. The proceeds from such a fee would be channeled to help with recycling and disposal costs.
It means setting up a commission to establish a consistent standard for consumer guidance so that a "green" label or a "recycling" label has specific meaning and consumers can express their environmentalism with their pocketbooks. There can be no doubt that environmental consumerism is the nuclear weapon of recycling. It only needs specific guidelines in order to be fully unleashed. Once this happens, the market will respond accordingly. Only by having functioning markets for recycled goods can we hope to achieve any worthwhile level of recycling.
It means establishing product design standards to maximize recyclability.
It means policies that minimize waste materials in the manufacturing processes of American companies.
It means packaging standards that result in the least use of throwaway materials and the greatest use of containers that are earth friendly.
The objective of all these policies should be to create a mindset of avid consumer and governmental activism so that an equilibrium lifestyle becomes a simple matter of every day habit and behavior.
Global Warming
The issues here are well known. We need energy policies which maximize the investment in conservation and renewables and which minimize the burning of those fossil fuels which cause the greatest emissions. On the cutting edge here are the utilities. Federal and state regulatory policies should tie a utility's rate of return to its commitment to energy conservation and the encouragement of renewable energy sources. The loss of a utility's revenue base caused by using less fossil fuel based energy should result in a net plus in the utility's rate of return. That rate of return should be above that which could be achieved by the usual standards of proper financial and technical management. Utilities must be put in a position to maximize their shareholders' value by aggressively and relentlessly pursuing policies consistent with the need to reduce global warming.
We also need policies which maximize the planting of carbon dioxide consuming trees both in America and worldwide and which minimize the need to cut down existing trees anywhere. There are going to have to be serious discussions about how to save tropical rain forests which are so vital to any effort to lessen the buildup of carbon dioxide. Telling countries not to demolish their forests is as effective as their telling us to reduce our energy consumption. These countries will not adopt policies which benefit mankind but go against their national economic self interests. The developed world has to be prepared to tip the economic scales in exchange for the obvious benefits it will receive. This is an area where we can tum to the Japanese and Germans and ask them to take the lead. They had all sorts of reasons for bypassing the Persian Gulf war. We expended our resources to safeguard their interests. Here is an opportunity for them to do the same for all of us in preserving the great forests in the developing world. A planet threatened by rising oceans is in no less peril than one threatened by a Saddam Hussein. This is a brave new world and quite uncomfortable. But global warming isn't very comfortable either.
Planting trees should be a national passion. It should be a normal and recurring event at schools, in city parks, at factories, in backyards and front yards. The President should make this a standard ceremony when visiting various parts of the country. It would be a ceremony with real moral purpose - a purpose instinctively understood by our young.
The earlier section on recycling is applicable here since it is the use of wood products to make paper which consumes an enormous number of trees. We must get to the point where the paper we write on, the newspapers we read, and the circulars we receive in the mail are all printed on recycled paper.
One major obstacle here will be some in the press since the commitment to environmentalism in the editorial department is sometimes not matched by the vice-president of business operations. The latter will go on for hours on why today's high speed newspaper printing process cannot use recycled paper due to lessened fiber strength.
Come on, fourth estate. Let's see total leadership here. \
Land Use
Loss of woodlands, open space and farm land is the result of investment dollars being used for development The implosion of many of our urban centers is the result of an absence of investment dollars being used for development.
We deplore the loss of the natural landscape.
We deplore the decline of our urban centers.
Since neither has to occur, there must be a better way.
Development dollars flow in very prescribed channels. As a partner in a development company, I know this all too well. Forming these channels are tax laws, zoning regulations, investment incentives, and land use policies such as height restrictions, green space requirements, and the like. Government sets the channels and the market place responds accordingly. Developers go where government tells them to go whether or not it makes any sense. The battle over development pits conservationists against developers. It should be conservationists against government officials since the developers are only building where and what the laws allow.
The late 1980's saw this truth play itself out on Cape Cod. As chairman of a state environmental task force I had proposed the idea of a moratorium on development on the Cape. The notion created a firestorm and I was villified by developers and town officials and state legislators. They deemed the idea irresponsible and stated their strong belief that it would die of its own illogic. No elected officials beyond a few isolated selectmen came to my defense. The Boston political establishment was nowhere to be found.
Then a funny thing happened. The Boston Globe did a poll and found that two-thirds of the Cape inhabitants supported the concept and fully three-fourths endorsed the regional land use planning proposal known as the Cape Cod Planning Commission. This revelation raised the political stakes considerably.
When I scheduled a hearing at Cape Cod Community College, I was picketed and heckled at by hundreds of developers and construction workers. In response, the Cape's conservationist community began to organize in earnest and the battles lines were drawn. Charges and countercharges were the order of the day and soon no one was safe from the controversy.
The issues were placed on the ballot and we won handily. In a subsequent 1990 special election, the planning commission was enacted into law despite a severe economic downturn that had seen development come to a virtual halt.
In the end, the developers saw me and the conservationists as the enemy. The conservationists, in turn, saw the developers as the enemy. I, however, did not blame the developers. They were only trying to make a living. I blamed the elected town officials who had determined the rules of the game. They were the ones who had allowed unconstrained development that was at variance with the wishes of their consti tu en ts. They could have prevented the abuses by voting the appropriate safeguards. They chose not to. As a result, the battle between developers and the conservationist community was unavoidable. It could have been otherwise. It should have been otherwise.
It serves little purpose to constantly have these battles over development issues. The end result is often exhaustion, bitterness and/ or bankruptcy. It would be far better to establish land use guidelines that everyone understands and which reflect a community's consensus. That is what political leadership is paid to do.
The reason that all this means something has to do with two values. First, it is the preservation of the land that God gave to us. There is a spirituality to our surroundings. Primitive people understand this. Modernized people often don't. Secondly, it is the retention of the unique character of all the places which make up America. It is who we are as contrasted to who everyone else in the world is.
The role of the Federal government here is primarily to articulate the importance of these values and to adopt policies that support its position. These are essentially local and state matters, but the feds should also look at their own approaches. It should do a systematic analysis of existing federal tax laws (such as the various depletion allowances) to see if they are incompatible with these values . It should also reexamine the adequacy of tax and funding policies which would direct investment away from open space to our urban centers (such as historic preservation tax credits, urban enterprise zones, UDAG grants, etc.)
It should further look for other opportunities to preserve open space. The scheduled closure of some of our military bases that was announced recently would be such an opportunity.
Finally, it should encourage mayors and governors and legislatures and city councils to consider the issue more pointedly. Visits to places that have preserved land or retained a sense of character should be high on the agenda of top governmental officials, including the President and Vice President.
Again, as in previous sections, the above is not meant to be exhaustive of policy initiatives but rather is suggestive of a philosophy that would cause us to constantly think in terms of an equilibrium with the earth.
Population Control
Nothing would serve the cause of environmental equilibrium as much as population control. Nothing would insure environmental disequilibrium as much as the world's population growing uncontrollably. The same can be said relative to the issues of energy use and world social order.
The earth is simply not capable of accommodating endless human expansion. We are increasing at a rate of 93 million people a year. In 1830 there were one billion people. In 1990 there were 5.3 billion. Within the next decade we will increase population equivalent to all the inhabitants of Africa and South America combined. Towns have become cities. And cities have become megalopolises. It cannot continue.
The dilemma is not food. We can produce enough to feed the world's current population. People starve today because of political instability and the failure of food distribution systems. The starvation in Ethiopia and the Sudan is made even more tragic by the fact that it need not be.
The real dilemma of unconstrained population growth is three-fold.
First, while food stuffs can be produced every year into infinity, fossil fuel energy cannot. The earth is energy resource limited and those limits are very real. (More on this in the next section.)
Secondly, the world's burgeoning population is streaming into the major cities, particularly in the third world, and rendering those cities virtually unworkable. This is a formula for great social and political upheaval in the wake of serious degradation of even the most basic quality of life in those cities.
Thirdly, the growing consumption of, and demand for, natural resources is virtually unsustainable. There is just so much clean air. Just so much clean water. Just so many available landfills. Just so many ways to dispose of hazardous wastes. The land and the oceans are receiving unspeakable volumes of waste each and every day. The earth was never meant to be a giant waste disposal unit. To pretend that it can is to threaten human survival.
None of this is new. No one doubts the inevitable consequences of unlimited population expansion. So why don't we take it seriously?
The reason, very simply, is domestic politics. The Reagan-Bush years have been marked by open hostility to family planning worldwide. While the Democrats supported such efforts as quietly as possible hoping no one would notice, the Republicans saw it as a clear opportunity to placate domestic political interest groups.
The Reagan-Bush approach has bought marvelous political self-benefit at the expense of future social dislocation. And they don't care one bit
We Democrats must care. Our obligation lies beyond the Roger Ailes perspective. We will be judged in future years by how well and how forcefully we began the drive for a stable world population. In this regard the New American Mandate is a moral imperative that is worldwide in its responsibility.
Index
Forging A New American Mandate
PAUL E. TSONGAS
lII. The Environment - Equilibrium With Earth
There has always been an environmental constituency. Unlike many interest groups its objective has historically not been its own economic well-being. Its goal has been the preservation of nature, a sense of being at one with the land and water and air and all the creatures which co-inhabit this planet.
That core environmental constituency has been a political bedrock, hundreds of thousands, indeed, millions of people, feeling very strongly about the legitimacy of their cause.
What is different about this issue in the modem day is the newly recruited battalions to the environmentalist army and the breadth of their concerns. The historic group (begun in large part by moderate Republicans) is sometimes dismissed as "tree-buggers." (It is ironic that someone's love of a tree could be viewed as a negative characteristic.) The modem coalition, however, involves people whose interests are much closer to home. It involves citizens who have been affected by toxic dump sites or air pollution or have come to fear the quality of the water they drink. These newly minted conservationists are going to be no less committed to the cause of environmental protection. Indeed, in many respects they bring a kind of passion that has been sometimes absent. A despoiled earth will not be tolerated by human beings depen-dent upon a clean earth for survival.
Now there is a third group in this coalition.
This group is largely a time-of-being phenomenon. It is the post-Cold War generation. If one sees generations in terms of time frames and definitive events, the progression in recent times arguably would be Depression/World War II, Cold War, and Vietnam/Civil Rights/Nuclear War.
When the Berlin Wall came crashing down, the spectre of East-West nuclear confrontation was rendered highly improbable. The young people now coming of age know, and will only know, the return of democracy to Eastern Europe and the centrifugal forces at play in a weakened Soviet Union.
An era has passed and with it much of the fear of a superpower caused nuclear winter.
As this generation analyzes the world in which it will mature and live out its years, it does not perceive a world of calm and quietude. It perceives other dislocations. And one of the most severe stems from the mindless abuse of our planet by generations focused on other issues. This new generation sees a world of possible climatic cataclysm, of a world buried in its own excessive trash, a world where the air they will breath will threaten the health of themselves and of the children they are beginning to bear. They see virgin forests of antiquity falling to greed. And they see population growth which threatens to turn the future of mankind into an endless series of bloody clashes over ever-limited resources.
Simply put, they sense global disequilibrium. The earth is not at peace with its inhabitants. We are consuming resources at a rate which is not generationably sustainable. We see population growth rendering third world cities dysfunctional. We are despoiling this mother spaceship and will eventually render it hostile to human well-being.
Our young think differently than we do. As we get older the time frame we think in shrinks because our remaining time on earth has lessened.
Not so the young. With their sense of their own immortality they can look out and see forever. A planet in disequilibrium is hazy to shortterm focused adults. It is alarmingly clear to our offspring. They know they will inherit the consequences.
I learned this lesson soon after the Valdez oil spill in Alaska. I was driving through Chatham on Cape Cod and noticed that I needed gasoline. Without much thought I turned into the nearest service station and pulled up next to the pumps. There came an immediate howl from my three children. I had stopped at an Exxon station. They demanded that I drive away.
My response to them was that this particular gas station owner had no responsibility for the oil spill. They rejected that argument as irrelevant. I was patronizing a despoiler of the environment. No more. No less. Their voices reached an insistent crescendo of righteousness and I decided to drive off to calm the din.
The incident troubled me. As the Senate co-author of the Alaska Lands Act, I have always seen myself as an ardent and committed environmentalist. I always saw myself as the defender of Alaska's wonders. My children, however, were beyond me in their sensitivity. How different from what I thought about when I was their age. They had become dedicated environmental activists and I had never noticed.
We should welcome their alarm. It calls us to a true stewardship of our environment. And such a stewardship is uniquely American. We are the continental nation. Descendents of Teddy Roosevelt and Ansel Adams. We should see this calling as returning home to what we are truly all about.
Specifically what?
International Leadership
It is appalling that we were the most notable footdraggers at the recent international convention on global warming. So much for George Bush being the environmental President. We must lead the charge for global conservationism. If not us, who? If not now, when?
Washington has true champions of the environment in the House and Senate and in the EPA. Let the White House use its influence to spread that commitment throughout the land and across this globe. Let the New American Mandate establish the principle that love of earth is mainstream America, a reflection of the best of us in all of us.
The vehicle for doing this would be to proclaim the goal of global equilibrium. This means the pursuit of policies and lifestyles that allow the consumption of resources to be consistent with having an inhabitable planet over the generations.
The issues here are obvious. Global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer are the most noted but they are merely the tip of the melting iceberg. These two issues deserve the highest level of attention and concern rather than the jittery avoidance that has characterized the Reagan-Bush years. I chaired the first hearings on global warming as a Congressman in June, 1977. It was an issue that was obscure to some, but all too relevant to those who testified. In the absence of any White House or media concern the matter remained dormant until the very hot summer of 1988. All of a sudden it was a topic of popular discourse. That is not how serious issues should be confronted. The White House needs to establish a national dialogue on the scientific data. Pretending that these matters are secondary is risking the lives of millions of people should they ever come to pass.
A Recycling Ethic
Ancient history is often marked by great events that took place at large feasts or simple small repasts. From the tales of Homer in ancient Greece to the beginnings of the world's great faiths, history was often made when people broke bread together.
But the archaeologists in the year 2991 will be able to unearth artifacts of millions upon millions of meals consumed in 1991. They need only go to the local landfill and dig a bit. There they will discover the true artifact of our time - the disposable, once used, plastic utensil. In addition, they will find all kinds of commodities specifically designed to be thrown away rather than repaired when they are broken.
The archaeologists of today are unable to find virtually any artifacts from those events.
The age of the disposable society must give way to the age of recycling.
Recycling must become as much an automatic personal habit as brushing one's teeth. Again, here, as in other issues referred to previously, it is a matter of mindset.
Such a mindset already exists. But its existence is inversely proportional to the age of the person. The young do not thoughtlessly dispose of aluminum cans into trash cans as do many of their parents. They want to collect them for recycling. There is great promise here. As a member of the Recycling Advisory Council, I am struck at how willing corporate America is to move in this direction. In many respects they are far ahead of the politicians. Much is happening. Americans instinctively want to be in harmony with their environment. A clear call for sustainable lifestyles will be received with great response. Let us sound that call.
Such a call has to be backed up by government procurement policies at the local, state and federal level that give real preference to recycled products. This will help to establish markets that are now often fledgling and vulnerable.
It means introducing a virgin materials fee. This would give recycled commodities only a slight economic competitive advantage over virgin products, but it would set a tone as to the need for manufacturers to rethink procurement practices. The proceeds from such a fee would be channeled to help with recycling and disposal costs.
It means setting up a commission to establish a consistent standard for consumer guidance so that a "green" label or a "recycling" label has specific meaning and consumers can express their environmentalism with their pocketbooks. There can be no doubt that environmental consumerism is the nuclear weapon of recycling. It only needs specific guidelines in order to be fully unleashed. Once this happens, the market will respond accordingly. Only by having functioning markets for recycled goods can we hope to achieve any worthwhile level of recycling.
It means establishing product design standards to maximize recyclability.
It means policies that minimize waste materials in the manufacturing processes of American companies.
It means packaging standards that result in the least use of throwaway materials and the greatest use of containers that are earth friendly.
The objective of all these policies should be to create a mindset of avid consumer and governmental activism so that an equilibrium lifestyle becomes a simple matter of every day habit and behavior.
Global Warming
The issues here are well known. We need energy policies which maximize the investment in conservation and renewables and which minimize the burning of those fossil fuels which cause the greatest emissions. On the cutting edge here are the utilities. Federal and state regulatory policies should tie a utility's rate of return to its commitment to energy conservation and the encouragement of renewable energy sources. The loss of a utility's revenue base caused by using less fossil fuel based energy should result in a net plus in the utility's rate of return. That rate of return should be above that which could be achieved by the usual standards of proper financial and technical management. Utilities must be put in a position to maximize their shareholders' value by aggressively and relentlessly pursuing policies consistent with the need to reduce global warming.
We also need policies which maximize the planting of carbon dioxide consuming trees both in America and worldwide and which minimize the need to cut down existing trees anywhere. There are going to have to be serious discussions about how to save tropical rain forests which are so vital to any effort to lessen the buildup of carbon dioxide. Telling countries not to demolish their forests is as effective as their telling us to reduce our energy consumption. These countries will not adopt policies which benefit mankind but go against their national economic self interests. The developed world has to be prepared to tip the economic scales in exchange for the obvious benefits it will receive. This is an area where we can tum to the Japanese and Germans and ask them to take the lead. They had all sorts of reasons for bypassing the Persian Gulf war. We expended our resources to safeguard their interests. Here is an opportunity for them to do the same for all of us in preserving the great forests in the developing world. A planet threatened by rising oceans is in no less peril than one threatened by a Saddam Hussein. This is a brave new world and quite uncomfortable. But global warming isn't very comfortable either.
Planting trees should be a national passion. It should be a normal and recurring event at schools, in city parks, at factories, in backyards and front yards. The President should make this a standard ceremony when visiting various parts of the country. It would be a ceremony with real moral purpose - a purpose instinctively understood by our young.
The earlier section on recycling is applicable here since it is the use of wood products to make paper which consumes an enormous number of trees. We must get to the point where the paper we write on, the newspapers we read, and the circulars we receive in the mail are all printed on recycled paper.
One major obstacle here will be some in the press since the commitment to environmentalism in the editorial department is sometimes not matched by the vice-president of business operations. The latter will go on for hours on why today's high speed newspaper printing process cannot use recycled paper due to lessened fiber strength.
Come on, fourth estate. Let's see total leadership here. \
Land Use
Loss of woodlands, open space and farm land is the result of investment dollars being used for development The implosion of many of our urban centers is the result of an absence of investment dollars being used for development.
We deplore the loss of the natural landscape.
We deplore the decline of our urban centers.
Since neither has to occur, there must be a better way.
Development dollars flow in very prescribed channels. As a partner in a development company, I know this all too well. Forming these channels are tax laws, zoning regulations, investment incentives, and land use policies such as height restrictions, green space requirements, and the like. Government sets the channels and the market place responds accordingly. Developers go where government tells them to go whether or not it makes any sense. The battle over development pits conservationists against developers. It should be conservationists against government officials since the developers are only building where and what the laws allow.
The late 1980's saw this truth play itself out on Cape Cod. As chairman of a state environmental task force I had proposed the idea of a moratorium on development on the Cape. The notion created a firestorm and I was villified by developers and town officials and state legislators. They deemed the idea irresponsible and stated their strong belief that it would die of its own illogic. No elected officials beyond a few isolated selectmen came to my defense. The Boston political establishment was nowhere to be found.
Then a funny thing happened. The Boston Globe did a poll and found that two-thirds of the Cape inhabitants supported the concept and fully three-fourths endorsed the regional land use planning proposal known as the Cape Cod Planning Commission. This revelation raised the political stakes considerably.
When I scheduled a hearing at Cape Cod Community College, I was picketed and heckled at by hundreds of developers and construction workers. In response, the Cape's conservationist community began to organize in earnest and the battles lines were drawn. Charges and countercharges were the order of the day and soon no one was safe from the controversy.
The issues were placed on the ballot and we won handily. In a subsequent 1990 special election, the planning commission was enacted into law despite a severe economic downturn that had seen development come to a virtual halt.
In the end, the developers saw me and the conservationists as the enemy. The conservationists, in turn, saw the developers as the enemy. I, however, did not blame the developers. They were only trying to make a living. I blamed the elected town officials who had determined the rules of the game. They were the ones who had allowed unconstrained development that was at variance with the wishes of their consti tu en ts. They could have prevented the abuses by voting the appropriate safeguards. They chose not to. As a result, the battle between developers and the conservationist community was unavoidable. It could have been otherwise. It should have been otherwise.
It serves little purpose to constantly have these battles over development issues. The end result is often exhaustion, bitterness and/ or bankruptcy. It would be far better to establish land use guidelines that everyone understands and which reflect a community's consensus. That is what political leadership is paid to do.
The reason that all this means something has to do with two values. First, it is the preservation of the land that God gave to us. There is a spirituality to our surroundings. Primitive people understand this. Modernized people often don't. Secondly, it is the retention of the unique character of all the places which make up America. It is who we are as contrasted to who everyone else in the world is.
The role of the Federal government here is primarily to articulate the importance of these values and to adopt policies that support its position. These are essentially local and state matters, but the feds should also look at their own approaches. It should do a systematic analysis of existing federal tax laws (such as the various depletion allowances) to see if they are incompatible with these values . It should also reexamine the adequacy of tax and funding policies which would direct investment away from open space to our urban centers (such as historic preservation tax credits, urban enterprise zones, UDAG grants, etc.)
It should further look for other opportunities to preserve open space. The scheduled closure of some of our military bases that was announced recently would be such an opportunity.
Finally, it should encourage mayors and governors and legislatures and city councils to consider the issue more pointedly. Visits to places that have preserved land or retained a sense of character should be high on the agenda of top governmental officials, including the President and Vice President.
Again, as in previous sections, the above is not meant to be exhaustive of policy initiatives but rather is suggestive of a philosophy that would cause us to constantly think in terms of an equilibrium with the earth.
Population Control
Nothing would serve the cause of environmental equilibrium as much as population control. Nothing would insure environmental disequilibrium as much as the world's population growing uncontrollably. The same can be said relative to the issues of energy use and world social order.
The earth is simply not capable of accommodating endless human expansion. We are increasing at a rate of 93 million people a year. In 1830 there were one billion people. In 1990 there were 5.3 billion. Within the next decade we will increase population equivalent to all the inhabitants of Africa and South America combined. Towns have become cities. And cities have become megalopolises. It cannot continue.
The dilemma is not food. We can produce enough to feed the world's current population. People starve today because of political instability and the failure of food distribution systems. The starvation in Ethiopia and the Sudan is made even more tragic by the fact that it need not be.
The real dilemma of unconstrained population growth is three-fold.
First, while food stuffs can be produced every year into infinity, fossil fuel energy cannot. The earth is energy resource limited and those limits are very real. (More on this in the next section.)
Secondly, the world's burgeoning population is streaming into the major cities, particularly in the third world, and rendering those cities virtually unworkable. This is a formula for great social and political upheaval in the wake of serious degradation of even the most basic quality of life in those cities.
Thirdly, the growing consumption of, and demand for, natural resources is virtually unsustainable. There is just so much clean air. Just so much clean water. Just so many available landfills. Just so many ways to dispose of hazardous wastes. The land and the oceans are receiving unspeakable volumes of waste each and every day. The earth was never meant to be a giant waste disposal unit. To pretend that it can is to threaten human survival.
None of this is new. No one doubts the inevitable consequences of unlimited population expansion. So why don't we take it seriously?
The reason, very simply, is domestic politics. The Reagan-Bush years have been marked by open hostility to family planning worldwide. While the Democrats supported such efforts as quietly as possible hoping no one would notice, the Republicans saw it as a clear opportunity to placate domestic political interest groups.
The Reagan-Bush approach has bought marvelous political self-benefit at the expense of future social dislocation. And they don't care one bit
We Democrats must care. Our obligation lies beyond the Roger Ailes perspective. We will be judged in future years by how well and how forcefully we began the drive for a stable world population. In this regard the New American Mandate is a moral imperative that is worldwide in its responsibility.
Index
| Introduction |
1 |
||
| I. |
Economic Survival –
The Creation of National Wealth |
5 |
|
| II. |
Education –
The Meeting House of Our Society |
32 |
|
| III. |
The Environment
— Equilibrium With Earth |
38 |
|
| IV. |
Energy, Fossil Fuels
– Someday There Won't Be Any |
47 |
|
| V. |
Foreign Policy – Time
to Heal Thyself |
58 |
|
| VI. |
The
Culture of America – The Essential Need |
70 |
|
| VII. |
Return to Purpose |
85 |
|
| VIII. |
Biography |
86 |
Copyright © 2023 Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in
Action. 