That Oughta Fix That Global Warming Thing

When you try to obtain County permission for a little project, you hit the tripwire that inevitably and unwittingly slams you headlong into the Network. The Network that was ostensibly built to combat global warming, to fight against agrochemical pollution, to save salmon, protect whales, house people sustainably and affordably, and stop coal shipments directs its know-it-all suspicions towards hapless you. Of course, if you can pay "donations" to have the Network ignore you, then your mega-dock or super-house might not attract a whiff of concern, but if you're just John Q. Public trying to do something more normal, you're in a spot of bother.

It doesn't matter what your project actually does to the environment, if anything. If it suits them, the grant-fed, self-interested Network backed by the credulity of superficially-thinking believers will shake you down and treat you as a likely environmental criminal no matter what you're doing. After all, there is money to be made in stopping environmental menaces like you, and someone in the Network might actually win an award for stopping you too. You are a surrogate for all the environmental ills of the world; as big a potential threat to life on earth as global warming itself. Well, at least that's how the Network can write it up in the next grant application.

So a Network that claims to be saving the planet actually ends up hassling elderly B&B owners (see email below), shellfish farmers, a small business owner who wants to store kayaks in his own barn, and a simple guy who only wants to grow some organic blueberries for his environmentally friendly restaurant. The rich are able to buy their way out of scrutiny; affordable housing proliferates; and the middle class disappears -- the people who usually start businesses and raise families and pay taxes.

The Network does everything it can to prohibit people from working at home and using their land, and then it tries to "solve" the self-inflicted economic crisis by promoting activities that it controls, like eco-tourism and further grant-funded government-sponsored activities. It rails against development, and then promotes development that it runs.

Most of all, the Network tries to get the right people in office ... both elected office and on the Committees ... because the health and well being of the Network depends on who "they" have in office to pull strings. They need enablers. They need government money and complicity. Will the people who vote for a living beat out the people who work for a living?

So far, I think, "they" are winning, especially when you consider rulings like the one described in the B&B email below. Paraphrasing the email below, if "no guarantee of no future impacts" is the new impossible-to-pass litmus test for whether we can do anything anymore, then we're all doomed. It provides the justification for the Friends and the rest of the Network to stop everything. Looking at the Hearing Examiner papers, you can get a sense of the grand Friends/Network strategy for us all. The trick is to maneuver everyone into a potential nonconforming situation, then target us whether there is an impact or not. In the B&B case, the use was denied not because of impacts (there aren't any), but just because nonconforming uses must be phased out because of judicial policy.

Read the email below by clicking on the image. Since it isn't a public records email, I have redacted the personal information. The email is just another disturbing, meddling, pointless injustice perpetrated by the Friends. Aren't you glad the Friends intervened to stop a kindly 82-year old woman from selling her two-room B&B so she could finally retire? That oughta stop the whole global warming thing right in its tracks, don't you think? Well done Network. Well done Friends.

Click to enlarge. Friends intervene to crush B&B owner.