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.

Yay Frederick Community Garden!

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

Poking along:

I don't mind the killing off of the newest "new" analysis -- good God, we have been analyzing for far too long -- but then say what you ARE going to do, please.

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.

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.