Reading: THE MOST PRESSING ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM?

Christian Environmental Studies Center @ Montreat College
http://cesc.montreat.edu

The Most Pressing Ecological Problem We Are Facing Today

Calvin B. DeWitt

Recently I was asked by a magazine editor what I think is the most pressing ecological problem we are facing today. Before responding, I went through the list of things we hear so much about: global warming, ozone layer degradation, deforestation, species extinction, water degradation, global toxification and human and cultural degradation. But these I put aside as the most pressing for one that affects each of us right where we live. And, unlike the global problems we face, this is a problem that we actually can do something about through direct and personal action.

What is the most pressing ecological problem we are facing today? The most pressing ecological problem we are facing today is the continuing consumption of excellent agricultural lands and valuable natural areas within the continuously-increasing commuting ranges of our villages and cities.

We have created a vicious cycle of suburban and rural housing development that in turn results in increased traffic and congested highways. Highway congestion leads to highway “improvements” that move traffic faster over greater distances and this increasingly puts more countryside within commuting access of our urban centers, opening still more rural lands to land conversion.

Accompanying this explosive rural housing-highway improvement cycle (H-H Cycle) is increased speculative value of rural lands that in turn results in increased rural land taxes that make it more and more difficult for farmers to maintain economically viable farms. Increased land taxes in turn result in increased willingness of farmers to sell their land to “developers” with the result that more land is converted. Services such as police and fire protection and schools need to be provided and the increasing tax rates that result are multiplied by increasing property values. This multiplicative increase in taxes ultimately compels farmers and other keepers of the land to sell. Thus the explosive rural housing-highway improvement cycle combines with an explosive property tax-farm evacuation spiral (T-E Spiral) that virtually guarantees consumption of agricultural lands and natural areas.

The H-H Cycle and T-E Spiral are augmented by increasing local reliance on imported foods and decreasing reliance on locally produced foods– the local to distant food inversion (L-D Inversion). This is an inversion of food supply that, remarkably, makes food purchase from distant sources cheaper than food from local sources through the agency of large international and global food and farm commodity corporations.

These corporations are assisted in their work both locally and nationally by improved publicly provided highways and airports as well as low-cost fuels. They are assisted in Two-Thirds-World food-supplying countries by cheap labor and low environmental standards. They are abetted by a local and global support system (L G Support).

Finally, consumption of rural lands that result from these processes does not produce the negative feedback that might be expected. Reduced local food availability and higher local food prices that otherwise would result from consuming rural lands for nonagricultural uses are canceled by moderate-cost imported foods. Thus, essentially, there is a disconnection of locally-needed food from the local agricultural land base. This is the food supply from land base disconnection (F-L Disconnection).

These five processes, the H-H Cycle, T-E Spiral, L-D Inversion, L-G Support, and F-L Disconnection, conspire (“breathe together”) to convert rural lands and natural areas into urban uses to the detriment of agrarian culture and nature. It is done with the assistance of the Two-Thirds World poor as well as the assistance of the One-Third-World populace through their complicity in these processes and their subsidizing these processes through provision of public transportation facilities and low-cost fuels. The result of these processes in the United States is the loss of one to three million acres of agricultural land by its conversion to urban-related uses annually– out of a cropland base of some 400 million acres. In addition is an unquantified loss of natural habitats.

Compounding this problem has been our unwillingness even to describe the five processes that are consuming us, our land, and our agrarian culture, much less deal with them. We continuously are failing to distinguish between development and growth as these occur in the landscape (but make a clear distinction between them when dealing with our own bodies).

We are refusing to see what the land and problems of urbanization clearly are telling us. The serious issue here is degradation and reduction of local agricultural production and production potential, degradation and elimination of natural areas and ecosystems, and degradation of agrarian culture and agrarian values.

At root, the serious issue is the continuing failure to see ourselves as truly responsible stewards of Creation. We have acquiesced in giving over this responsibility to the five processes that now control us and– amidst busy schedules, competing commitments, and higher priorities– we have been persuading each other that our giving over of our stewardship responsibility to these processes is right.

What Must We Do?

This problem of continuing consumption of excellent agricultural lands and valuable natural areas within the continuously increasing commuting ranges of our villages and cities has been continually addressed in my town, the Town of Dunn, 4 miles south of Madison, Wisconsin since 1972. It is for the success of this work that my community has been awarded the Renew America Award in the category of “growth management” in a competitive judging process nation-wide.

Early on, we identified the five processes that were driving us to do what we did not want to do. Soon we discussed and designed means of altering these processes at the local level.

In our rural town of 34.5 square miles and 4000 people, we next declared a moratorium on all land divisions and related housing development for two years. Next, we inventoried everything in our town: agricultural lands, soil types, wetlands, woodlands, prairies, plants and animals, bird migration corridors between our marshes, archeological sites, historical sites, residential areas, sewer districts, fire districts, and land ownership patterns.

Based upon this we wrote the Town of Dunn Open Space Preservation Handbook (available from our Town Hall at 608-255-4219) in which we put forth the results of our inventory and the principles we believed should guide us. Based upon this we wrote the Town Land Stewardship Plan (Land Use Plan), voted it in through a referendum by the people, and then wrote ordinances to enforce the adopted plan. Since the late 1970s when the plan was put into effect we have increased to 5000 people but we also have redirected the five processes to serve our people and our land. Basic to the measures we took, was establishing a sense and reality of community among us. We re-instituted celebration of Arbor Day together. We have an annual potluck supper at the Town Hall and have an annual bicycle tour of the town. Most important, we have re-instituted local democracy that has as its centerpiece regular town meetings in which all of us citizens have a voice.

Building community in our town, along with reinstatement of democracy, has provided not only the opportunity to discuss the problems and challenges we face, but also has provided the conditions for us as citizens to learn our environment and the forces that shape us. It also has provided the opportunity for us to take hold of our own responsibilities to govern, and to be stewards of the land and all that it contains. Our town now serves as a model for an increasing number of communities across the land.

Reprinted from Radix Magazine (Berkeley, CA) 22, no. 3 (1994): 8-10, “The Consumption of Land” by Calvin B. DeWitt. Revised.