In the Gazette's rather scant coverage, we are treated to such quotes as:
Chairman Royce Hanson: "We're not satisfied that the existing growth policy is where we ought to be."
Vice Chairman John Robinson: "The growth policy is still very much oriented to a suburban mode and the problem with the suburban mode is it is premised on the notion that there will always be more resources... Whether we like it or not, we are an urbanized county to various and sundry degrees; we are no longer a suburban county."
Board member Jean Cryor: "You should never have to face [having to ask yourself, (ed, thardman)]what is the least bad thing we can do."
When we can find where the Planning Board is hiding their public-accessible copy of the draft report on growth policy revision, we'll post a link to it.
Now, it is no secret that I believe in limits to Growth, and that in particular I oppose the cancerous growth of Sprawl.
I'm a pagan, as I keep telling people, and my book of faith isn't so much a book as it is a library, and unlike most belief-systems, my belief system is amenable to and in fact demands peer review. As time goes on, I firmly believe, things change, and we may change with them.
A part of my litany recaps a possibly overbroad and pessimistic view of history:
We give thanks for fire.
For fire is the first tool.
Fire bakes shaped clay.
In baked clay we smelt iron.
From iron we make tools.
With tools we shape stones.
With shaped stone, we build cities.
With cities, we build civilization.
With civilization we shape the very world.
We give thanks to fire, the first tool
And wonder if we will ever know to quit while we're ahead.
Now, I do not have any religious imperative within my belief system to "be fruitful and multiply", heaven knows (so to speak) that there are plenty of people who believe that and who are doing that; the population of the planet has slightly more than doubled just within my short life of a mere 50 years.
Quite possibly the majority of all human beings that have ever lived are now alive. We're definitely at our limits for sustainable populations, or beyond those limits. Global warming has come upon us hard and fast since I first put together klaatu's Earth Operations Central website with all of the links to NASA and other scientific data, starting back in 1995 or so.
Yet even in one of the world's most educated, left-leaning, earth-friendly, and liberal-electing political districts on the planet -- Montgomery County, Maryland -- only now are people starting to change policies of growth that practically beg for the onset of Mass Extinction of Species.
That the Holocene Mass Extinction Event -- the "Sixth Extinction" -- is ongoing and likely accelerating isn't any more a matter of debate than is Global Climate Change. That it has taken this long for the Montgomery Planning Board to start thinking that perhaps we need to start taking better care of the world around us is a matter of wonder to me.
The news has been coming fast and furious. For example, this very morning, the Washington Post reports that the "dead zones" in the Chesapeake Bay and elsewhere are much more persistent than expected. What the scientists aren't saying -- although it is starting to become apparent over time -- is that we have converted significant portions of the global ocean from aerobic environments into anaerobic environments, in which thrive no life that we like, and plenty of forms of life including anaerobic bacteria such as Botulism. Now, rather than the people, it's the toxic life-forms which may be fruitful and multiply and take dominion over the earth, which was theirs before the rise of the oxygen-generating photosynthetic organisms such as Algae and other plants.
It's not as if the economy demands expansion, or more production, or more facilities where production can occur; indeed, as the Post reports, massive global overproduction has left the markets effectively drowning in inventory.
Speaking as an environmentalist, speaking as a longtime observer of the economy and industry, and speaking as someone whose object of worship is the creator of the world we're killing (and if one respects the creator, why not respect the creation?), I have to ask all of you, not just the Planning Board, but everyone:
Stop. Take a moment to reflect. Examine what you are doing, but even more, ask yourself WHY you are doing it.
We have enough, we have enough goods, we have enough population, we have enough Sprawl, we have enough Dead Zones in the Chesapeake.
Stop! You're Killing Me! screams the earth itself...
And thank your lucky stars that the Planning Board seems to be hearing that as a whisper in the still, small voice of their Consciences.
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