[Sosfbay-discuss] MH Times

[Wes Rolley]

I have talked to some of the people in my sub-division (Holiday Lakes in 
Morgan Hill), about 500 homes, about the PLAN initiative.
There are a number who view increased controls, such as OpenSpace 2006 / 
PLAN initiative as being an increased level of regulation and actually, 
a "takings" from their property value.  This property rights issue is 
increasing in it's focus.  The Feature story 
<http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=16409> in High 
Country News this week is dedicated to the issue. They cast is as a 
libertarian question, but in California, there is a strong presence of 
property rights organizations.  Thie is what got Richard Pombo elected 
the first time. 

High Country News also has commentary by Rebecca Clarren 
<http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=15139> on the Oregon 
initiative (passed in Nov. 2004). " Nearly 60 percent of Oregon voters 
across rural and urban areas passed a ballot initiative that requires 
state and local governments to either compensate landowners when 
environmental or planning laws harm property values, or else to waive 
the regulations."

I wrote a commentary that ran in today's Morgan Hill Times on 
environmental regulation and property rights. Here is is.

__
rankly, I am getting tired of the political rhetoric that continues to 
define conflicts over environmental regulation as a property rights 
issue. That is a sham foisted on us by those who think it their 
God-given right to make the maximum amount of money at our expense and 
the politicians, like Richard Pombo, who find this a convenient rallying 
cry.

Who would not be for property rights? It is part of the fabled American 
Dream. Owning your own place is a part of that which brought people to 
America. It was the lure that pulled the earliest settlers west, first 
to Kentucky and Ohio, then across the Mississippi and then clear to the 
Pacific. It is that same lure which has created suburbia, freeways, smog 
and a myriad other associated problems.

American individualism fuels the idea that what one does on and with 
their property is their own business. Just think of the farmer who took 
barbed wire and fenced the land, denying the cattleman the range to run 
their cattle. How many movies have been made of that theme. Or the hard 
working widow, just trying to make ends meet. Come back, Shane. This is 
deeply ingrained in our mythology.

Of course, the property rights issues are correct up to a point. The 
problem is that too many things that we do on or with our own property 
don't stay there. They affect our neighbors as I did when I put some 
too-green wood in my fire ring. The smoke that came up blew into my 
neighbors house and he came over to ask me to shut it down. It was a 
problem of real concern because their son has asthma. Smoke knows no 
man-defined boundaries.

Such is the way with many of the problems that we have tried to solve 
with environmental regulation. They arise out of the fact that what one 
does on or with a piece of property does not stay there. Neither air nor 
water nor most species other than man know anything about these property 
boundaries we have set in courts of law.

There are many property rights advocates who even seek justification in 
biblical tradition. To those people I would only quote "whatsoever ye 
have done unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me." 
It is too easy to think of the "least of these" as some poor people 
living off in Africa or the Amazon. In truth, they live next door. They 
are our neighbors. If we were all intent on being good neighbors rather 
than being focused on maintaining our property values, maybe we could 
accomplish both.

Given that there are too many who are not willing to be good neighbors, 
to think of the "least of these" in such broad terms, then the vast 
majority of Americans believe that there is a role for government to 
mandate good behavior. We all agree with laws concerning theft. Why then 
do we not agree with laws that say "thou shalt not contaminate thy 
neighbors well."

Of course environmental policy is messy. Regulations are not as neat as 
the four sides of a quarter-acre lot. Often we do not know precisely 
what is the underlying cause of everything nor do we know what the 
ultimate outcome of remedial actions might be. However, that should not 
stop us from acting according to the best scientific information 
available. To do otherwise is to value ideology over fact, a decision 
that will often cause our grandchildren to ask "What were they thinking of?"

The major issue ecological issue facing us now is that of global 
warming. Al Gore called in an "Inconvenient Truth." Every day it seems 
that we read of something additional which is attributed to global 
warming. Just this week, I am watching the smoke from the Del Puerto 
Canyon fire. It is a very large fire burning mostly on private property. 
I studied this week the reports linking the size and frequency of major 
fires in the west to global warming and the climatic changes that it is 
bringing.

Most of the acreage consumed by this fire is private property, whose 
owners have rights. Do they have the right to expect that the rest of us 
will have taken steps to lessen greenhouse gas emissions? They are the 
ones whose buildings were destroyed and whose livestock, if they 
survived, no longer have range grass to feed on. These are not tenuous, 
maybe, maybe not, connections. The facts are real. It is not enough just 
to think of this fire as yet another accidental disaster. There are 
things that we can do to lessen the impact and, were we good neighbors, 
we would. We all contribute to global warming. Maybe it is time we 
accept the fact that good neighbors do not let their neighbor's place burn.

-- 
"Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this Earth" Roberto Clemente

Wes Rolley
17211 Quail Court, Morgan Hill, CA 95037
http://www.refpub.com/ -- Tel: 408.778.3024