Books like Fast Food Nation exposed the dark side of the All-American Meal, and there is a dark side to environmental-ish ideas too ... and oddly the two dark sides are linked. Like McDonalds, environmental-ish organizations spew images of wholesome goodness ... but there is an underlying profit motive distorting the truth. The truth about environmental-ish organizations is that their "wilderness loving" policies and actions actually promote urbanism ... by being against rural living. They even support and promote factory farming ... by demanding Conditional Use Permits (CUPs) for new family farming and suing to shut down family-run aquaculture.We'll beginWith a spinTraveling inThe world of my creationWhat we'll seeWill defyExplanation
If the environmental-ish proponents of the Growth Management Act (GMA) were to get their way, there would be über-planned cities and nothing else. The illogical conclusion would be that we'd all have to live in one crammed city bounded by uninhabited nature. There would be no country lanes ... no farm cottages ... no one-lane bridges ... no bucolic pastures. To feed people in the über city on the smallest possible land footprint, we would need planned factory farms, too ... there'd be no free-range chickens in that world.
At the density of Seattle, the entire population of Washington State would fit into Mason County ... with 50 square miles to spare. At the population density of Friday Harbor, the entire population of San Juan County would fit onto just two-thirds of Lopez. Do we really have a population and development problem, or do we have environmental-ish profit motives at work trying to separate people from nature and the land?
Watch the following entertaining video by (believe it or not) Chipotle, the Mexican natural (fast) food company. The images you'll see about mass produced food also apply to our centrally-planned, mass-produced environmentalism. We're not getting real environmentalism anymore ... we're getting "environmental-ish" ideas that people (especially city people) consume without thinking. And Crow Foods might as well be Friends Incorporated because both are only interested in money and image ... most certainly they are not interested in you, local food, rural character, or the environment.
These days, as with food, we have to ask ourselves, where does our "environmentalism" come from? We'll try to provide some answers in this series.
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| At the population density of Seattle, our State's entire population could fit into Mason County with room to spare. |
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| Depiction of mass produced community ... or what "growth management" looks like in its ultimate stages (from Behind the Green Mask) |
Planning is the enemy of rural-ness. Planning doesn't solve problems, it creates them.
ReplyDeleteWill the San Juan County EcoNazis be the first ones to volunteer to mount the Army trucks as they cart us away to Urban-o-topia? Or do they think they will be among the chosen few left behind to conduct environmental research and care for the Natural Habitat Preserve?
ReplyDeleteThey are so well organized and funded.
ReplyDeletehttp://futurewise.org/resources/news/aug13court
@ 4:36 PM
ReplyDeleteI think planning is OK. But it depends on the kind of planning for what end.
Are wedding planners OK? Pretty much. Estate planning. Good idea. Vacation plans? Nice to know we can afford where we want to go.
Ben Franklin famously noted that failing to plan is nothing more than planning to fail.
Planning for zoning changes OK? No zoning at all? Churches and nursery schools next to liquor stores and strip clubs?
It is long range central planning that eliminates flexible private and local land use decision making that is the problem. And when such planning is designed to implement a larger policy agenda that doesn't get much air play, we definitely got a problem
Don't forget all the meth havens that have been created by fake environmentalists too. All those logging communities that have been destroyed socially are chock full of meth addicts and prostitutes now. I don't think "they" want to expend the effort to completely get rid of rural communities because they are perfectly happy to let rural places starve slowly while dying of drug addiction and misery.
ReplyDeleteWe all know how this story plays out.
ReplyDelete"And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back- to capitalism, or forward- to socialism. There is no third way, nor can there be... What does this mean? It means that we have passed from the policy of restricting the exploiting proclivities of the Kulaks to the policy of eliminating the Kulaks as a class."
How many millions of people died in the last century from this style of thinking?
I'm not one to range far, and I do believe the TH is and should be local, even so I cannot resist; the San Francisco Chronicle reports a woman was run over and killed by a park employee as she lay in a public park on the grass with her child, (the child was missed by the truck).
ReplyDeleteThe good and well loved woman had several noteworthy degrees, but one might be a special interest to FOSJ and the few who continue to support that outfit, and it is: a degree from West Virginia University in ECOTOURISM.
Dear God help us, now there is enough interest (and money to be made) in this horrible idea, apparently enough to fill a classroom.
Imagine being saddled with student loan debt over a degree in ecotourism and then going to work for the San Juan Visitor Bureau.
ReplyDeleteBureau. We actually call that thingee a bureau. Here in the San Juan Islands.
Honey where are my socks? Did you look in the bureau where they belong?
But ... I digress ...
The " Six year transportation improvement plan" public hearing and deliberations on Thursday should be interesting. County council and planning department.
ReplyDeleteAgenda 21 thats what it is all about Go national and see what the enviros are doing to small ranching communitys in the western U.S. ranchers are being sued and losing their land and lively hoods daily the enviros get a grant from the govermant, sue the rancher and the govermant win millions All profit for the enviro while our tax dollars pay the bill and the rancher moves to town for a job
ReplyDeleteThe government doesn't win millions the enviros do my poor typing
ReplyDeleteYes that's right. The enviro sues the government, often over the endangered species act, and if they win recover all their legal costs at tax payer expense. It is a business formula.
ReplyDeleteWhat is so strange, is that the science out of Africa so clearly demonstrates, that the proper husbandry of domestic cattle, sheep and goats REDUCES the processes of desertification and is not the CAUSE. And this proper husbandry also then attracts wild herds to the same areas, once the grassland ecology is rebuilt.
Therefore, these US environmental groups, some based in the southwest are directly responsible for desertification in the process of destroying rural communities, ranching and the symbiotic relationship of husbandry to the land.
How fascinating to be in a position of power to destroy that which you say your are saving. The only explanation for that paradox is ... money ...
At the end of the day, all this enviro money dumped into this corpulent CAO monster fashioned by Shirene and Her Friends boils down to Temptation:
ReplyDelete"But it was just my imagination
Running away with me
It was just my imagination
Running away with me."
Please note that the complete name of the source of "Wildlands and Wetlands" image is BEHIND THE GREEN MASK: U.N. Agenda 21.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/BEHIND-THE-GREEN-MASK-Agenda/dp/0615494544
Hmmm. Maybe there is something to this Agenda 21 thing. Maybe it's not something you can "choose to believe" or not? The UN certainly isn't hiding it:
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf
http://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com/
No one on the left/liberal/progressive/environmental/sustainable/global/anti-ism'st side is trying to hide anything. They shout it out every single day, 24x7 in the blogs, and especially in the comment threads. There is documentable evidence in the Mission Statements of hundreds of NGO and Special Interest Groups that "conspiracy theory" denials of what they want to do is BS! Just as a start:
ReplyDelete1) Wildlands/Bio-diversity = push people into human habitation zones and set aside 98% of the North American land mass as nature preserves
2) Regional Equity/New Urbanism/Growth Management = destroy suburbs and move people into urban high density "walkable, public transit served" zones
3) Climate Justice = force Americans to reduce their energy consumption by 12x, while simultaneously sending $500 Billion a year to the Global South
4) Occupy "whatever" = government mandated socialism with free stuff for everybody, and no risk in life at all!
And much, much more...
We actually do have a highly organized entity here who has the task of implementing Agenda 21 in the islands.
ReplyDeleteIt is called the LIO, which I guess stands for Local Integrating Organization. No, I do not know what that means.
Anyway, the job of the LIO is to implement an Action Agenda of the Puget Sound Partnership. Reasonably viewed, the Action Agenda is a tailored localized implementation of Agenda 21.
Now, let's step back to our new National Monument status that certain outspoken FOSJ boardmember-activists are drooling over.
Google for the statements made by Secretary Salazar at various "community meetings" about the San Juan National Monument (invariably held in Anacortes on three days notice.
"This is just the beginning of a dialogue with our partners in the northwest,” Salazar said. “It is important that we build consensus from the ground up as our nation develops a 21st century conservation agenda."
If I were to shorten that expression I'd guess Salazar is referring to Agenda 21. I could be wrong.
But wait. The Feds are here to help us. See here:
"What appropriate management changes would ensure that federally-managed lands in the San Juan Islands are conserved for future generations and are a part of the larger regional fabric of protected lands and waters?"
What, indeed? Maybe the Friends will have input on behalf of all of us.
So this National Monument thingee isn't really just about San Juan County is it.
ReplyDeleteGoogling around for Salazar brought up this Whatcom county story. Check this out:
Crawford Proposes Support of Salazar/Obama-Plan, Reclassification of Chuckanut Rock, Lummi Rocks and Lummi Carter Point
http://www.whatcomexcavator.org/3/post/2011/08/heads-up-crawford-proposing-support-of-salazarobama-reclassification-chuckanut-rocks-lummi-rocks-and-lummi-carter-point-aug-9-agenda.html
" "Salazar said conservation of the islands complements President Obama's America's Great Outdoors initiative to establish a conservation ethic for the 21st century and to reconnect Americans, especially young people, to the natural world."
Gosh, thanks Mr. President! We, the people, already own the land. But you think the federal government needs to make it more meaningful, to reconnect us to it in a 21st century kinda way? Oh, brother."
You have to remember that environmental policy is made by Urban Elites. Ther job is to make sure that a large quantity of America is preserved in a Disneyland kind of way, so that "real Americans" ( the ones who live in dense urban high rises in walkable transit friendly neighborhoods) will have somewhere to go for two weeks per year.
ReplyDeleteBravo, TJ.. Bravo!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.planning.org/policy/briefing/
ReplyDeletehttp://www.planning.org/policy/briefing/
ReplyDeletewatch out they are getting stronger
we need to get stronger too
The Hell of it is, FOSJ has long become the desk top touch stone for the San Juan Island Archipelago.
ReplyDeleteGovernment desk jockeys, particularly the troops of the DOE have the view that what FOSJ has to say is gospel.
Further, we have the State Courts, who have had many, many interactions with FOSJ and here again we find a forward lean in rulings in favor of FOSJ.
Frankly, the clout of this small minded group is beyond comprehension. It can only be explained as something that happened over many years. Talk about fighting the establishment, that's FOSJ.
Yet, it continues.
Ole Stephanie stood in a very well attended Planning Commission Meeting and openly threatened farmers that "we" will not allow grazing near CA (critical areas) as all of us sat in wonder as to what exactly that might mean.
Now, we know.
Comparing this cosmic cluster**!@@ of centralized urban-to-rural planning to factory farming is spot on.
ReplyDeleteFrankenplanners ... genetically modified environmentalists ... recombinant regulations ... bioengineered wetlands ... automated activists ...