Getting Dirty: Politics

I have long hesitated to spend much time & space on political topics. My original inclination with Sustainable Frederick has been to target issues that are under-represented in media, not to mention that are less divisive. I may be able to avoid national politics, but at least on the local level I've come to accept that it is naive and even negligent for me to pretend there is no elephant in this room. I hope I don't alienate -- and therefore lose the ability to influence and inform -- those who will reflexively dismiss what I write when they begin to suspect I am not on their political team, but there is no time to be timid.

So here goes -- my first political salvo:

In broad terms, sustainability requires democracy. Further, sustainability requires a government that sticks its nose right into the issues of resource use.

This is really the sticking point: conservatives tend to want little or no government. They argue that any government is a slippery slope to tyranny, and besides the economy works better and more efficiently without government busybodies getting in our business.

I felt that way once, myself -- in college as a recently declared economics major I was in love with the idea of the free market unfettered by government regulation. Who can argue that capitalism and the relatively free market provides tremendous social benefit through innovation and through the individuals raising themselves up to reap the gains of opportunity? With that in mind, my naive student self argued that businesses wouldn't pollute the Earth knowingly, because then they would face increasing costs as the labor pool sickened. I argued that because rational people agree that an economy that systematically disenfranchises the poor is inherently unstable, then who wouldn't be in favor of a progressive system that provides opportunity to all?

Well, I still believe that the innovation and motivation that are inherent in a capitalist system are among the most potent potential forces for good on Earth. Now, however, I also understand what is known as the Tragedy of the Commons. In short, the tragedy of the commons is a metaphor that describes how people tend to shortsightedly eat up and ultimately destroy all of the value of "public goods" such as clean air and water.

See, the polluting company won't face costs associated with a sick labor force for years, and investors in the form of shareholders only care about this quarter. The company will move its production to China and investors will be long gone to other stocks, bonds and god knows what else long before any accountants post the costs of polluting the environment to any income statement. And while rational people may desire the stable economy that comes with economic equity, they would just as soon take the money and run off to some fortress playground of the rich.

Here in Frederick County, we want individuals and businesses to develop the land so that people gather what value we can from our most precious resource. What we don't want is for the land to be developed such that it loses the unique and irreplaceable value of the land itself. Imagine Frederick County looking like the sprawly parts of Montgomery County, or even worse like the fully sprawled Prince Williams County, VA? We don't want that.

And so we need our representative government to help us sustainably administer the land development process. We need public servants to work with and for us to protect our land from the devils of our worst nature who want to suck the blood of the Earth and turn it into gold in their pockets.

Looking for an Argument
I hope there exists someone out there that sees these issues differently and is willing to share. I would like nothing better than to have people who support less fettered land development to help us understand what sustainability looks like to them. If you know any who works to maximize the profits to be made by turning Frederick County into one large swath of ugly houses, or politicians who want to help them -- please send them this post and ask them to get in touch.

As 2010 progresses, I will be looking into how the candidates for County Commissioner see this issue.

New Voices: Introducing William Widmaier

Sustainable Frederick continues to evolve. Hopefully you have seen our wild Facebook success -- we are still working out the best way to use it, but we've already found the interaction we had been missing. Now I have the pleasure of introducing SF's first new writer!

William has an undergraduate degree in History & Journalism, and is now studying Environmental Biology. He has already been published in the Gazette here and here. As you might imagine, I am delighted that William brings such important and relevant skills and interests to the Sustainable Frederick blog.

Getting to the point, here is William Widmaier:

I rarely remember my first conversations with people, but I always remember meeting them.

And so, I would like to introduce myself.

My name is William Widmaier and I am going to help contribute to Sustainable Frederick, adding a new voice, opinion, and state of mind to an already well seasoned blog.

I’m from New York, but now I live in Frederick after graduating from Hood College last January. I don’t want to bore anyone with an autobiography so I’ll keep it short.

Growing up, I learned about growing food. My dad’s sizeable vegetable garden in Brooklyn taught me that some of the best things to eat are grown in your own backyard. Tomato, cucumber, and onion salad tastes that much better when you can say you picked the ingredients twenty minutes ago in a raised bed not twenty feet from the back door. Summer becomes the freshest tasting season you know.

Tomato season was a particular favorite, but as I grew older, my palate did as well. Now I treasure the chard and the arugula that sprout from the rich soil, the onions and the radishes just as much as the first cherry tomatoes off the vine.

Composting helps. Heaps of black gold in our little backyard have grown and grown over the years, and the parts of the yard that have grass are getting smaller and smaller.

But here in Frederick I rent a room in someone else’s house. I cannot simply change the landscape as I see fit.

Growing food is sustainable correct? Is it important for me to understand where the seeds are coming from, or how much water the plants may need? Does gardening save me more than buying cucumbers at the store? Is there some calculator that can tell me how much I am reducing my carbon footprint?

I will remember our first conversation, and how we met.

If wishes were fishes...

I sure wish Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania had been able to get something done -- anything -- to show that we can turn around the slow suffocating death of our Chesapeake Bay. If we had made any real progress at all in the last 25 years, we would now be able to build on that success in ways that protect our local constituencies (i.e. farmers, citizens, municipalities, and even developers).

Instead, we now have the Federal government stepping in like a bull in a china shop. I can hear the complaining already: Its socialism! It's fascism! It's a conspiracy! It's __(insert ignorant, ugly and false claim here)______!

I don't care what your politics, no one wants the Feds coming in and splitting our baby in half.

None of this is new -- we saw it coming a long time ago. In fact, did you know it was President Reagan who essentially created the Chesapeake Bay Program with funds committed in his State of the Union address in 1984?

We saw how that worked out -- no one wanted to make any hard decisions. Every constituency protected itself and waited. Farmers lost ground every step of the way because their run-off was an easy and obvious target and they were busy trying to justify not selling their land and retiring semi-rich to somewhere else. Developers made a bundle of cash. People -- native and immigrant -- were able to buy plenty of cheap houses for cheap. Municipalities collected more and more taxes (which allowed them to defer other hard choices which are showing up now). The States -- also flush with tax income -- pointed fat fingers at each other.

The Bay kept dying.

I hate that we can now look forward to the Environmental Protection Agency deciding who does what and when. I hate it. But I hate the death of the Chesapeake Bay more.

The Big Squeeze. Where do we go from here?

Part of success -- with sustainability like everything else -- is staying engaged even when there seems to be no answer. When things get really hard, its easy to let your mind step back from the problem and kind of give up. It's very frustrating to have no answer while the problem stares you in the face. It feels like something has to give -- its just not going to be the unsolved problem.

It's times like these that people disengage -- and it's times like these we can't disengage, or we lose. This is the lesson we learn when we see real life heroes doing the mundane heroic work of raising their children, of getting the job done, of continuing the conversation even when every cell in the body wants to scream, holler and leave.

Here are two sides of one of those frustrating impasses: farms and farming vs. the growth and development of Frederick County.



This article by Ike Wilson in the Frederick News Post captures some of the issues that might be best summed up by the opening line, "A merger of city dwellers with rural living continues to impose problems for agriculture..."

Development has put the squeeze on our farmland, and Wilson touches on several of the conflict points. I suggest you read it and understand that this conflict won't go away until it's solved. Sit with the tension.

Here are a few points I don't think get made well enough in our stilted public dialogue:

--- Our population is growing and everytime we put in a new toilet or sink we are adding burden to our over-burdened wastewater system, which in turn burdens the Chesapake Bay with death. Maryland and the U.S. EPA are very industrious when it comes to regulating farms, but they are not so industrious when it comes to asking all those builders and flushers to carry their fair burden.

-- Economies of scale are forcing farmers to expand into what are known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation -- CAFOs. With regard to pollution, CAFOs are like farms on steroids. But to a farmer trying to run a business, scaling up is one of few options.

-- Many people from urban backgrounds want to live in the country and many from rural areas want to live nearer to work. This should be a strength for Frederick County! People want to live here and whether they know it or not they want to preserve the natural and agricultural aesthetic of our land. (Slipping into a mini-rant: I just wish these suburbanites who fancy themselves nature lovers would preserve our natural aesthetic, instead of living in ugly developments that seem to sprout like cancerous weeds on our hills and dales. I also want them to understand that living in the semi-rural comes with the earthy reality of living next to farms. Oh, and one more thing -- what are these folks going to do when their ugly development is surrounded by 50 other ugly developments? Move to Pennsylvania or West Virgina and muck them up, I guess.)

We need farms. We need land on which people can live. Neither of these facts are going to change. Stay engaged. Don't give up.

Yay Frederick Community Garden!

The Frederick Community Garden has a website. Community gardens rock!

It’s Spring!

The crocuses and the forsythia have given notice, and the trees are starting to get that red hazy look as the buds start to bud. Our brown and gray winter is coloring up with pinks and yellows and little nubs of new green.

When you walk outside, do you notice that feeling in the air? To me it seems that there is something building, something about to burst out into the world. Its kind of what I feel when I look at a pregnant belly – by God that thing is coming out soon! Every bud is like the baby that waits to burst forth; fresh and sweet and chubby and full of life.

Birth, birth and re-birth! Life! Life! Life!

Let’s get in on the action! Let’s re-birth this baby and get starting growing the world the way we want it to be – the way we want it to be for our baby’s babies.

Since it’s Spring and we live in an agricultural paradise, let’s start with food. Let’s be part of all that bursting forth; let’s help our local farmer’s to plant those seeds, grow those plants, harvest those babies and eat them right up!

I have a proposition for us – when the Frederick County farmer’s markets open up this year, let’s spend just a little of our money every week on food grown in Frederick County. Let’s spend $20 every week to invest in the future of our county and our world – it’s a better investment than anything you’ll see on Wall Street!

Charity and Economy begin at home

The economy of an area -- in this case the Frederick area -- consists basically of what the community of the area produces and consumes plus money flowing in and minus money flowing out. There is miles of gray between these blacks and whites, but it works as a basic model.

Of course, we should first recognize that from most economists' perspective, we are really just kind of a slow moving side side show of the Baltimore Washington Area economy. The reason they see us that way is that our economy, like the whole area, is largely driven by U.S. Government money.

That's true and I see it differently -- I think Frederick has a distinct enough economic identity that we should seek to grow how we want to grow, as opposed to us becoming just another extension of DC and the East Coast sprawl. We have unique natural, economic and community resources that deserve local stewardship.

Still, let's be honest, we do depend economically on the Federal government -- at least as an employer of so many people, but also because of the spending the Feds do on construction and rent other locally provided services. So we are part of that larger economic area, and it is to our benefit as much as we might think or pretend otherwise.

So the Frederick economy has inflows of money from the Federal Government. We export -- in that the work is done here and someone not from here pays for it -- some biotech and some professional services, some agricultural products, some building and development services, and little bits of this and that.

Our money leaves our economy when we buy things brought here from somewhere else.

It's generally true that the more money we bring in from elsewhere, and the more we spend on goods and services produced right here, the healthier our economy will be. Don't get me wrong, I am happy we live in a global economy where I can get coffee, for example, from across the world. I believe the globalization of the economy is a good thing, by and large and if we don't screw it up.

Still, home is home. The closer our money stays to home, the better for all of us.



p.s. Look what great work the Frederick County Office of Economic Development is doing.

Too Depressing For Me Right Now.

Hope is essential.

With that frame of mind I posited that the answer is thinking of yourself as better, and then living up to your thoughts. No matter how low we are, we can imagine better and we can strive to achieve the better; as long as we have hope. I am pointing towards inspiration and aspiration, which is a grand and joyous place from which to work in the world, and what I say is also true in a life that is overwhelmingly bleak and mean. Thinking ourself better isn't just about the grand and joyous. It's also about continuing in the face of overwhelming everyday challenges. It's about getting out of bed to feed our family in the face of depression, it's about overcoming substance abuse, and sometimes it's about just not quitting.

A comment I received on that post (thanks, Maeke!) points to the reality of a different frame of mind. What if you don't live up to your thinking -- in other words, what if you aren't as good as you think? Setting your sights high and failing is tough and can kill hope. From this perspective, starting with "thinking ourselves better" is irrational. You are what you are, and thinking yourself as better than you are is delusional.

I find this argument to also be true and I also say that one person's delusion has always been another's inspiration. In fact, Jesus and Gandhi and the others all faced being called delusional and worse, and all went through times when they almost gave up -- and then they went and did what they did anyway.

So, I stand by the hopeful mindframe. When we fail and feel the darkness of despair murking up our mind, we must have hope and set ourselves on that course towards better.

And here is where I am failing at that right now: The Chesapeake Bay is dying.

We are choking it to death. Our sewage and the run-off from our farms and lawns is pumping nitrogen and phosphorous at toxic rates into our streams and rivers and then the Bay which leads to blooms of algae and other guck which suck all of the oxygen from the water -- creating miles of lifeless underwater Mars-scape.

We aren't alone of this of course, as a huge zone of death dances around in the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi River, too.

We, the people who live around the Bay, and our governments have so far proven impotent against this threat. Every few years the powers that be decide the goals that were set a few years ago were just too ambitious, and they re-issue new goals that being more "realistic" are also more like worthless. Meanwhile, very little changes and less progress is made.

You'd think people who love the Bay as much as we do would see what is happening -- everyone does -- and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. But that hasn't happened yet.

This is where I feel like maybe we can't do it. Maybe we just don't have the perspective and the political will to change what we do so we don't kill the Bay. Maybe we shouldn't try to be better than we have been. Maybe we are just flawed to such a degree that we should just try for an "undemanding attempt with no guarantees."

Maybe we should despair.


(photos courtesy of ChesapeakeBay.Net)

Something bursts forth to fill the gap

Agriculture in Frederick, and specifically local produce, is an interesting case study in possibility.

There is plenty of viable agricultural land in the county, some being used and much not. The economics of farming are such that for most farms the best bet is on large fields of commodities like soybeans, corn and hay. Some farms maintain success as vegetable producers, but its rare and requires specialized marketing like farmer's markets, this local organic(!) farm and this local orchard that are getting it done. The bottom line is that produce farms in this area depend on local markets, and to some extent tourist purchases.

The good news is that by all accounts, the Frederick market has demand for just this kind of local produce. Consumers want the produce, and many have proven they will pay a little extra for local produce. Of course, American consumers want something most of all and that's convenience, which leads us to the bad news.

The bad news is that since not enough people are buying local produce through existing sales channels, farmers aren't provided incentive to bet on growing more produce. Since not enough farmers grow produce for local markets, there are only a few retail options and there are no guarantees that what you want is what they got.

See how that gets in the way of the convenience thing?

For what it's worth, the farmer's markets and various local agriculture promotions do a great job. So far they haven't been of sufficient scale to kick start a market.

But, do you see how the elements for a new system are mostly in place, and that what may come is some innovation that gets us over the humps? The possibility is there for consumers to buy up enough local produce to persuade more farmers to enter the market and more fresh options will become available through more outlets. A few new jobs get created here and there.

Ultimately more of the money we pay for food stays here and gets spent here. Again and again.


Questions:

What will the businesses that distribute local produce look like? Will it be an against all odds year round mega farmer's market, or the existing markets beefed up, or some kind of network of CSAs? Will some entrepreneur figure out a new way to get it done or will some big chain find a way to get it started?

Starting with Ignorance and Values

The most politically immediate and relevant sustainability issue for Frederick right now has to do with getting rid of stuff we don't want anymore.

The three ways we get rid of garbage are by burying it in landfills, recycling it or burning it in an incinerator (or a "waste-to-energy facility" which means an incinerator that produces electricity). If you have been paying attention you'll know that the Frederick County Commissioners are planning to build an incinerator energy plant at the cost of something like $325 million. One Commissioner, Kai Hagen, is opposed to the plan and has made his case a few times, I don't think to any success. The "Waste Study Group" has created a website and a public campaign centered around the website www.no-incenerator.org.

Temperamentally, I'm with Hagen and the WSG, but I have to admit I don't know the facts.

Given our planetary climate challenge largely brought on by intensively burning stuff, it sure seems silly to burn stuff up into the air. While it sounds really great to turn trash into electricity, it just seems to good to be true -- like a perpetual motion machine. But, as I said, I don't know the facts.

Over the next few weeks I'll do some research and ask around, and when I can speak more definitively, I'll make the case as I see it. I generally prefer to let others do this kind of hard thinking, but who can I trust? I'm not saying I can't trust anyone -- I just don't know who. Most anyone who is writing about anything like this has a position to defend. I don't have a position to defend -- other than the position that I want the Earth to continue to be habitable for humans long after I'm gone.

So, what is Sustainable Frederick?

Defining sustainability is no small task. There are lots of definitions scattered around the net, and I’ll offer one later in this post. The problem is that it’s a word – like health -- that means more in context than it does in, well, just words. What is “health?” I bet your working definition of health incorporates a lot more than “the general condition of the body or mind with reference to soundness and vigor.” Health is what we eat and the kinds of activities we do, and it’s the state of our relationships. Health is our history and our family’s history; it’s what we aspire to achieve.

Any definition of sustainability will also seem simplistic and incomplete. Besides the limits of the words themselves, understanding sustainability is also hampered by the fact that it is an ideal that doesn’t actually exist for us to observe. It’s an ideal that we can only see in the future, in our imaginations and after we create it.

Having said all of that, we still need to start with a definition:

A sustainable economy is one where there is a harmonious relationship between the economy and environment, where the natural resources of the planet are preserved for future generations. Sustainable development is economic growth that preserves the natural and cultural resources of our region and our planet.

My hope is that Sustainable Frederick will show what sustainability can be. Over time we’ll see how a sustainable Frederick can look, and how it does look as it comes to be. As we talk about present and future realities and possibilities, we’ll get a better idea of what might come next, of how we can keep moving things forward.

A note on scope – Our subject matter will include, but not be limited to science and politics, economics and business and culture, current events and history, and the local, regional, global, county, state, country and world perspectives. We’ll have our and others’ opinions and facts, hopefully clearly distinguished. Sometimes we’ll write that we just don’t know, and sometimes we’ll be wrong (until we correct it).

Local News: Frederick City works at being more green

Adam Behsudi writes for the FNP that Frederick City has been working on identifying and carrying out plans to be more energy efficient and reduce waste, to use "methane produced at the city's wastewater treatment plant as an energy supply for the facility" and even to use more environmentally friendly cleaning supplies. It is good news that the city has this issue in its sights, and all of the ideas mentioned absolutely sound worth doing -- kudos!

One suggestion received by Planning Director Joe Adkins from a city employee had to do with forming "a group to prioritize and recommend sustainable practices," which sounds like a great idea. I hope we hear more about this soon! Behsudi also reports that residents are asking for more, which is the best news!

We do need more. First of all there are more opportunities to reduce waste and increase efficiencies. I don't know what they are, but someone does. Mr. Adkins is doing the right thing to start getting people thinking about it and offering suggestions. As suggestions come, more and more improvements can be made which will inspire more creativity. The different dapartments can share their best ideas with each other and that will cultivate the ground for more new ideas. Add in the idea of sharing lessons learned back and forth with the Frederick County Government and other towns and other counties and great strides will be made.

There's more, though.

As good and important and valuable as efficiency is, it is logically limited. Improved efficiency is still doing what we did before. Sure, we are doing it better, more efficiently, but we are still doing the same thing. Consider this absurd but apt metaphor: if we want to get from Frederick to Hagerstown but find ourselves going 85 mph on 70 East, slowing down to 45 won't help. We'll have to turn around.

So what is "turning around?" If we want to turn around how our government does everything by thinking more and more sustainably, what do we do?

I don't know, and neither does anyone else. Well, people like McDonough and Amory Lovins have a better idea than most of us, but really, we're going to have to figure it out as we go. To find true sustainability, we have to get out and explore the Rumsfeldian world of "unknown unknowns."

We have to discover sustainability.