[MPWG] highways and natural resources

Fri Jan 25 11:05:59 CST 2008

Re the highway expansion soon to occur in North Carolina: Robin, I'm really sorry for your loss.? If you knew about route I-99 up here in my neck of the woods, you'd be sorry for me as well.? We're all grieving the loss of local places, every one of us, whether we let ourselves feel it or not.

However, this is serious indeed. The news of yet another highway super-sizing in North Carolina should be highly disturbing to anyone who is concerned about medicinal plant preservation, though at first glance it may seem sad but irrelevant news to non-locals. I'm thinking hey Robin, we've got our own superhighway expansions to worry about up here in good ol' Centre County Pa., your news is not my problem, right?? Not so. You see, the area in question -- Western North Carolina -- is among the two or three most biodiverse places in the continental United States -- it is a genetic "hotspot" which the generations alive today are responsible for protecting in case life on earth plans to continue after we're gone.? This is not just development in someone else's backyard.? This is the famous but highly nebulous "loss of habitat" which is (arguably) the #1 cause of medicinal plant endangerment (and migratory bird endangerment, and amphibian endangerment, etc.). 

Some might argue that "unsustainable harvest" ties or exceeds loss of habitat for first place, for the "most destructive" award.? But in the case of biodiversity lost to this particular highway project, you have to admit that unsustainable harvest is not at all a consideration.? Not harvesting the plants at all, not valuing them in the slightest, their invisible and disposable status in public (state and federal) land-use planning, is the dark horse coming in first to jeopardize the planet and its future in this case.? Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.

Interestingly, this is about a public good over which the public has little or no say, even though we've got this little system we like to call a democracy supposedly governing us.? While I personally may care about the loss of biodiversity in one of the top most biodiverse places in the North-Western hemisphere, and while protection of and access to biodiversity (a.k.a. natural resources) may be a "natural right" not only of US citizenship but of being an earthling as well, in legal terms I'm not affected at all. When it comes to having a say about this particular road, I have no standing whatsoever in a court of law because the road does not take or destroy or impede my personal property or livelihood in any way.? The cultural priority here defines the road itself is a public good, not the biodiversity in its way.? 

Note that if any of the biodiversity in the path of this superhighway is to be spared and protected, the onus rests entirely with the locals to prove that protection of biodiversity is a public good, even though the road in question is not at all a local road. A superhighway like this serves globalization, not the local economy. We the people, represented by our government, thus treat biodiversity as private property when convenient (i.e., when there is money to be made for private gain, and I don't mean piddling local private gain) and we treat it as public property when we want to trash it. Robin Suggs and his neighbors haven't got a chance to prove any sort of "taking" relevant enough to stop a superhighway -- sorry Robin, but y'all are just a bunch of local yocal hillbillies over there -- your personal loss does not come anywhere near the overall public gain we'll all enjoy when trucks can bring consumer goods to your door 15 minutes faster, fueling the trickle-down Reaganomics of our time.

So, local sovereignty  is not applicable, while at the same time the law does little or nothing to protect our greater common right to your local biodiversity.? When it comes to democratic decision-making about the fate of that common heritage there in that biodiverse-rich gene pool soon to be paved over? -- call it biodiversity, call it natural resources, call it God's living creation if you'd like -- no one has a vote.? You're a local yocal, and I'm a meddling environmentalist outsider who should mind her own business.? Divide et impara. Thus "progress" is inevitable.

Assuming, then, that this superhighway is unstoppable, our government, a.k.a "we the people," are making a really unintelligent decision if all that biodiversity ends up being churned into muck and wood chips and used as highway fill.? If the bottom line really is money, how much of a fortune is there in that seemingly disposable backfill waste?? If it's most convenient to consider it public property for the time being, then why destroy it without cashing in on it first?? How is it possible that the bottom line rule does not apply to this particular form of collateral damage?? It's not as though there is no market for it.? It's not as though a living medicine chest for tomorrow has no value.? So why turn a blind eye to it?? What mass delusion or group mental illness allows the blind to continue to lead the blind in design of a master plan geared toward guess what, burning more fossil fuels?? If we could determine how much value there is in just one plant, say, Slippery Elm, in that 51 mile swath of land -- good lord we could buy a health care system for your entire county on the proceeds.? If residents of the county used that Slippery Elm themselves, how many dollars saved in doctor visits are we talking about?

The law is not fixed.? What if the public were made aware of the $$$ represented in resources being discounted and destroyed every time a highway is built or expanded.? Would biodiversity begin to have any meaning and value at all if that were the case?

Bob, you're so right.? A fifteen degree winter day in the nor'east mountains is made for ranting.? Be well,
Jennifer www.herbalistswithoutborders.org ? 

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