Developers versus the community

As my long-time friend Philip told me recently, “the only people, and you’d be one of them … who get to be rabidly opposed to development would be people who never had any children, or whose children will remain in the house they were born in, living with mom and pop until they croak.”

Well, right. I opted against crowding and what I viewed as impending environmental disaster when I had a vasectomy at age 21 (in 1971).

Then again, I’m not against development, per se. I’ve lived all over the country in my 57 years and I viscerally appreciate how things change over time. When I lived in New England, I built a cabin on forested land that had been sheep pasture just two hundred years in the past. In Arizona I lived on land that had supported farm crops five hundred years back, but which had turned to desert. In Alaska I lived in barely-scratched wilderness which is today being obliterated and melted at an accelerating rate. Buncombe County has shifted considerably since I first visited here in 1956, and far more so since I made my base-camp here in 1981. But conditions are different now in very many ways.

Climate change is confronting us with a whole new set of problems and possible solutions. The oil supply is peaking. An international financial meltdown is all too likely as the dollar tanks, oil heads for $100 and the U.S. becomes the world’s biggest debtor nation. How much do you think your hours are worth in yen or rubles?

And so, to bring it all home, in the current city council election we are presented with some candidates who get it and some who don’t.

Bryan Freeborn and Elaine Lite clearly get it. I explicitly and unequivocally support their election efforts. We need people like Bryan and Elaine on the Asheville City Council to advance positions that will, hopefully, ease our transistion into a post-climate-change world. Look at the drought in WNC and the fires in California: we don’t need cheerful assurances, we need a realistic approach to our common future.

Brownie Newman absolutely knows the issues involved, but seems too ready to fudge his positions for political gain. He appears to me to be a minimum-stink candidate, saying the right words concerning many issues but all too willing to play politics instead of adhering to heartfelt beliefs.

I will vote for Freeborn and Lite and, somewhat reluctantly, for Newman, on Nov. 6. I urge everyone receiving this post to do the same. The other candidates on the ballot are pledged to take us in an utterly unsustainable direction. We simply cannot afford their short-sighted quest for immediate financial gain.

~ by bothwellsblog on October 31, 2007.