The Land for Maine's Future bond is a $12 million bond proposal that, if passed, will leverage at least an additional $7 million for a total of $19 million to protect Maine Land from development.
The LMF program, through two prior bond initiatives, has provided $85 million since 1987 that has been used to protect wild lands and farm lands from development. According to the Maine Land Bond web site, the LMF program has protected over 120 parcels of land, helping to preserve Maine's rural culture, and maintain wild lands for recreational use. According to a 2004 report issued by the University of Maine's Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy, and USM's New England Environmental Finance Center of the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service, the LMF program is an "investment in the future of Maine's environment, economy, and cultural heritage....(Mainers should view LMF) not as an end in itself, but as a tool or instrument of their larger abiding purposes: sustainable economic development, environmental stewardship, and community building." Furthermore, "In addition to recreational and ecological impacts, changes in land use can have improtant economic effects on Maine communities. Throughout the state, there is recognition that natural resources have economic value beyond their potential for extraction or development. "
There are more than 100 businesses and governmental units in the coalition who recognize the importance of continuing to protect Maine's rural heritage for future generations. I fully support the bond initiative, and hope all will vote yes on November 8.
The US DOE and EPA have released the 2006 automotive fuel economy guide. It's their annual listing of the rated fuel economy of most 2006 models. (Some models, like apparently the Honda Civic Hybrid, weren't available for testing. Also, vehicles weighing over 8,500 lbs, like your average Hummer, aren't tested. I guess for these vehicles, the answer is pretty obvious.) Tops on the list, no surprise, are the Hybrids along with a host of diesel-powered VW's. Bottom of the list - well, I'm not going to bother, because you, the kind readers of this Blog, aren't in that market.
I know that there has been some controversy about the EPA fuel economy ratings (that they are set under unrealistic driving conditions and are, therefore, inflated), but this seems to be a pretty good guide. It discusses tax incentives available for buying hybrids and other altenatively-powered vehicles, improved emissions from fuel-efficient cars, and how you can increase national security by reducing the country's dependence upon foreign oil. (Hey, if it gets somebody to buy a more efficient vehicle, I'm all for it!) There is also a guide telling us how to get the best performance out of our cars. For a document prepared by the US government, it's actually quite useful.
The Republican party is at it again, with House of Representatives voting to gut the Endangered Species Act in a ballot that followed party lines in the Republican-led House. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, key elements of the bill undermine species recovery, eliminate habitat protection (the single greatest threat to endangered species is habitat destruction), exempts pesticides from Environmental review (!!!), and allows corporations to collect millions of dollars in damages by asserting that they have been haremd by endangered species protections.
Words cannot describe how disgusting this bill is, especially in eliminating environmental review of pesticides and sacrificing plant and animal life in favor of corporate profits.
Closer to home, a similar story takes place in Brunswick, where the town council rejected a "rural smart growth" ordinance that would have required developers to consider the impact that developments would have on wildlife habitat. According to the Times Record's op-ed piece, "the four councilors voting against the plan essentially took the position that the proposal infringes too much on landowners' property rights. They are simply affirming our society's norm, which asserts that human needs take priority above all else."
It saddens me that in this day and age, not only do we routinely reject the need for environmental consideration in the world of business, but we are rolling back existing protections for the environment. I believe that profit which comes at the expense of the enviromenent and other living beings needs to be curtailed, taxed heavily, or eliminated.
It is impossible to imagine a world in which humans have no impact on the environment, where we live in complete harmony with other living things. However, that is no justification for not making every effort to minimize our impact. Capitalism and the pursuit of profit are an artificially constructed value that has taken hold in this country and is seen as the guiding motiviation for everything that people do. We seek out profit at the expense of our fellow humans, so it comes as no surprise that animals and plants should also get little consideration if they get in the way of additional dollars.
The "profit is primary" value is not universally held in this country, however, and certainly not across the planet. Some of us get much more satisfaction from coexisting harmoniously with nature. My attempts to live a sustaining lifestyle bring me much more spiritual satisfaction than the pursuit of dollars ever has, or ever will have. But my opinion is in the minority in this country, and I don't believe that this moral obligation that I feel is sufficient reason to protect the environment. (As much as I wish it were true, I know that most Americans are not "environmentalists".) I do believe, however, that these threats to the environment and to other species threaten the very existence of humankind.
We know, for example, how pollution can adversely affect our health, and how wetlands destruction eliminates natural barriers against flooding. But, as I wrote in my Ecosystems at the Millenium post, "we don't know what we don't know." Other than the nebulous "lack of biological diversity" argument, we don't really know what will happen as more species become extinct. We are all familiar with the concept of the "circle of life", where the existence of one species (plant or animal) sustains the existence of another species, and so on. What happens when too many species are eliminated, however? Is there some sort of "critical (lack of) mass" point that we might reach whereby we have eliminated enough species that human life can't be sustained?
I'm certain that there are plenty of skeptics out there who will dispute the potential of this ever happening. However, I'm pretty sure that human population has already exceeded a level that can be supported by the Earth over the long term. (Baumer told something to me last night, stating that the planet can't sustain more than 6 million humans, but I can't remember the citation. Help me out, Jim?) We may not be on the track to human extinction, but I'm convinced that we are on a track toward a massive reduction in human population over the next few generations. I find it repugnant that people who have children, or who hope to have children, continue to make choices that will have negative repurcussions for perhaps centuries to come.
The choices we are making today could change what happens in the future. That the Town of Brunswick has not chosen to take a stand asking landowners to make sacrifices today for the long-term benefit of the planet is disappointing. That House Republicans have chosen to reverse long-standing protections in the name of greater corportate profitability is disgusting.
A developer is proposing to build a "clustered housing community" in the wilds of Saco, Maine. According to the linked Press Herald article, "Diane Doyle's plans call for a cluster of 31 "green" houses on 15 acres of a 65-acre parcel off Route 112 near the Buxton town line, with the rest of the land set aside as open space."
Doyle, a Saco developer, said she envisions the project as a demonstration of green building techniques and land-use planning. She said the homes, priced at about $400,000 and restricted to people 55 and older, would be positioned to maximize solar gain and feature landscaping requiring no irrigation or chemicals. The clustering of the homes is meant to foster a sense of community and leave open space for all residents to enjoy.
This project is the sort of community that we will need to build in the future. It combats sprawl, which has led to excessive resource waste (fuel consumption primarily), and we will be seeing more and more use of green building technology in the future as fossil fuels become more scarce. It appears to be a proactive approach to building a subdivision.
Naturally, the neighbors are pissed. "(A) few neighbors who never expected to see a cluster of homes in their neighborhood have expressed doubts." One guy (Paul Rouleau) has a reasonable argument: "Rouleau said he is not necessarily opposed to the project but he believes the City Council needs to closely scrutinize the effect on traffic and neighbors' wells."
When you consider, however, that 150 acres or so will not be built upon, these concerns seem to be minimized. When you could have 70+ houses in the area and you're only getting 35, I would think that would be better. It's just the people who abut the development area who are being impacted by the concentration of houses. These are issues for the city council to consider, as a zoning change would need to be in the offing. The area is currently zones as "rural", meaning that lot sizes can not be under two acres. The rural designation seems to be a bit antiquated, as what it does today is lead to overly sprawling subdivisions.
It seems like people are all over "good ideas", until they have to deal with those ideas themselves. People love tax cuts, but they don't like their services to be cut. I could go on, and in fact I do have some ideas that I'm developing for a full-fledged "NIMBY" post. I hope that the Saco city council decides that the needs of the many should take precedence to the needs of the few. A "green" development is to be applauded, and I hope that I read about more such projects in the future.
