Here are back issues of the Commonwealth Tree, each with its introduction and links to essays and cartoons.

Volume 1, No. 2 - Whose Environment Is It, Really?
Volume 1, No. 1 - Conflict, Diplomacy and a Place We Call Home

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AUGUST 2005 - Volume 1, Number 2

Way back in time, our ancestors’ relationship with their surroundings was elemental: vigilance and need. Later, as they found they could cultivate and domesticate, they also discovered in their environment mysteries, awe and pleasure, inspiration for their songs and paintings.

Around the world, human inventiveness put fire to metal, metal to wood and bone, and civilizations upon the land. The Earth’s environments came within reach and reason, and were divided into property by those with ambition and power, or simply the need to start anew somewhere else.

Ownership, and the environmental resources that came with it, gave spark to wars and subjugation, and the imaginations of political theorists. As power from natural resources propelled the growth of cities, artists rediscovered transcendental powers in the countryside and wilderness.  

In the United States, wealth accumulated, railroads advanced, forests were converted into neighborhoods and oil fields into mobility. Progress, defined as economic advancement, became the operative and on-going philosophy of our country.

“The environment” has always provided for our progress, and has absorbed the results. It has provoked and nurtured the development of architecture, literature, diplomacy, medicine and industry. It’s been the source of enormous fortunes and middle-class comforts. Groups have formed to promote the idea of their surroundings - land, water and air, and the myriad wonders contained - as commons, to be enjoyed, utilized and preserved for all people and times.

As we regard our society and our environment in the 21^st century, the relationship is often unsettled, while need and vigilance are still dominant, though somewhat matured, themes. Controversies about ownership and responsibility reverberate through the media, politics and public.

The Nature Conservancy
Incorporated in 1951 by a small group of naturalists and scientists, the Nature Conservancy is now the tenth largest nonprofit corporation in the U.S. It controls billions of dollars in assets and receives more than one hundred million in donations and grants per year. Over the years, it’s been involved in the management, partnership, sale or purchase of 15 million acres in the U.S, and more than 100 million acres around the world.

With its first purchase of 60 acres, the Conservancy’s founding philosophy was to collect parcels of land and water resources, and to keep them from exploitation and development. As the holdings grew, the idea of protection sometimes led to exclusion; public access was restricted from some purchases, which were available only to scientific study. This attitude came along in the 1960s and 70s, when people looked around to find rivers stinking and devoid of life, the air caustic, and wildlife disappearing. The word “environment” became synonymous in the popular mind with nature, pristine or corrupted. It was Richard Nixon who signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the Endangered Species Act.

Times do change. While scientists and environmentalists still sit at the Nature Conservancy’s board of directors table, now many directors are captains of industry. Some of the corporations represented at the table exploit nature for profit in destructive ways. A few directors have gotten into hot water for developing Conservancy purchases for homes and other private uses, and some Conservancy lands have been logged or drilled.

Critics say the Nature Conservancy is making its reputation available for commercial exploitation, as marketers look for ways to “green” their products and practices by association. Further, they say, the Conservancy could be co-opted for political purposes. Others at the Conservancy counter that it’s always been a market-based organization, buying rights to land from willing sellers. They say they’re simply keeping up with the times. The leadership of the Nature Conservancy prefers not to comment on the practices of its affiliated corporations.

Measure 37
In the early 1970s the people of Oregon looked to the south, where development was consuming the Southern Californian landscape. Alarmed at the prospect of unrestrained growth in their state, which many valued for its natural beauty, voters opted for some of the most restrictive land use regulations in the country. Local planners were required to follow state guidelines, written to restrain urban sprawl, slow the loss of farmland, and preserve the state’s natural attractions.  

There were Oregonians, many of them rural and near-urban landowners, who didn’t agree with the new regulations. They pointed to the Fifth Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which prohibits the government from taking private property “for public use without just compensation.” They said that by limiting the purposes they could put to their own land, the government was effectively taking it from them. Around the western half of the country, groups of landowners, lawyers and politicians organized and agitated against government regulation of private property. They swelled the ranks of “government’s-the-problem” voters who, in 1980, helped propel Ronald Reagan into the White House.

Back in Oregon, the laws have done what they were intended to do. The pace of urban sprawl is considerably slower there than the national average. Portland is a national model for sustainable development and public transportation. But when Oregon’s economy faltered in the early years of this decade, the time grew ripe for repeal.

Ballot Measure 37, passed in 2004 with 61% approval, now forces the state and counties to allow development, or to pay the owners fair value for lost income. A few restrictions remain – Measure 37 applies only to properties where the 1973 regulations were imposed after the land was last bought, and some uses may still be prohibited. There are about 1000 claims so far, for housing developments, shopping centers and commercial buildings, many of which will be granted. Zoning and “Smart Growth” planning are out; freedom to develop is in. Similar ballot measures are being prepared in other states. In Wisconsin, the Legislature has removed all funding for a Smart Growth program begun under Tommy Thompson, which has worked with localities to come up with development plans for the state. Governor Doyle may restore the money with a veto.

The primary role of government is to act on behalf of the public good. Figuring out the definition of good, and just who the public happens to be, makes democracy a dynamic and complex endeavor. The right of land ownership is a bedrock principle of American democracy. But what is the definition of common good, when concentric bands of strip malls and McMansions ripple across the landscape? Will future generations in Wisconsin, and across the country, find it in a few isolated, protected parcels of forest, farm and wetlands?

Gas Boom
There’s an accelerating need for natural gas in the U.S. Our economy’s success relies on plentiful and relatively inexpensive energy. At projected rates of consumption, we’ll go dark by the end of the decade without scores of new gas-fired electrical plants, and more ships bringing imported gas to more terminals along populated coastlines.

Since 1982, the federal government has offered leases on 229 million acres of public and private land in 12 western states for oil and gas drilling. Over the past five years, oil and gas companies have routed more than $75 million to the campaign accounts of political candidates. Regional BLM managers have been instructed to speed up the processing of permits, and have been reprimanded when their pace is considered too slow.

Gas drilling sites have spread across formerly protected public lands, some known for their wildlife and scenic beauty, most of them environmentally fragile. Great volumes of water come to the surface with gas drilling; the National Resources Defense Council estimates that waste water from the 50,000 proposed wells in Wyoming’s Powder River basin would more than equal Los Angeles’s water use through 2020. The drilling process causes the water to become polluted with toxic minerals and compounds. A bill now before Congress would excuse oil and gas companies from having to file environmental impact studies for many sites they wish to drill in the West.

On around 58 million acres in the West, the subsurface rights are owned by someone other than the surface landowner, and those rights are sold and maintained by the federal government. Ranchers, hunters, homeowners and environmentalists are finding that they can’t stop drilling companies from paying “fair value,’ then plowing roads and drilling pads wherever they wish on a property. Some surface landowners are happy to take the money; others are angry and mobilizing. They’re taking their anger to Washington, after finding that their state legislators mostly favor the drilling companies. Ranchers strangely find themselves in common cause with environmentalists, in opposition to politicians they’ve long supported.

Yours, Mine and Ours
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, when asked about the results of her supply-side policies on society, replied, “There’s no such thing (as society)! There are only individual men and women.” Gaylord Nelson, governor, senator and founder of Earth Day said, “Our air, water, soil, forests, oceans, rivers, lakes, scenic beauty, wildlife habitat, minerals, that is the wealth of the country. That’s our wealth. And that wealth determines our standard of living, and it determines the quality, physical quality of our lives.”

The legal doctrine of “public trust” has a long history. It holds that the air we breathe and the water we drink belong to the people, not to individual or corporate interests. In recent years, that common trust has been challenged in courts and sold in legislatures. Jonathan Rowe writes, “The environment isn’t just about nature any more. It has become a metaphor for a battle against market, and sometimes governmental, encroachment that extends to virtually every corner of society. Everything is up for grabs.”

Virtually every earthly environment has become a marketing commodity: alpine meadows in the service of cleaner burning gasoline, forest creeks sluiced by urban SUVs, our front yards made more attractive through chemistry. As clothing companies have discovered that people will pay to advertise brands on their bodies, so our attitudes about nature – recreation, purity, beauty and awe – are packaged, labeled and sold back to us across the marketing spectrum.

All of us, every day, are in a relationship with the ‘environment,” as described by economics, health, politics, food, fun or an indefinable feeling of connection. Who is to define ownership of the place that helped to develop the human mind, and all that our minds are given to enjoy and try to understand? How is that place, replete with timber, water, soil, coal and gas, scenic hilltops and bird songs, to be apportioned? Whose environment is it?

Dave Haldiman is editor and publisher of The Commonwealth Tree. He’s also a documentary maker.

Curt Meine
Leave No Acre Behind

Robert H. Nelson
Playing God Responsibly

Harvey M. Jacobs
This Land is My Land

Steve J. Dean
A Mind of Metal and Wheels

Dave Brown
Social Responsibility by Design

Maurice Lange
Cosmology Happens

Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren
The Rulings of the Roads

Deke Rivers
Epiphany

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APRIL 2005 - Volume 1, Number 1

Welcome to the first issue of The Commonwealth Tree, a journal of ideas, opinions and experiences based in southern Wisconsin. Take a few minutes to read one of the pieces here, then try another. You’ll find an interesting variety of writers, many of them from this area.

In this issue there are pieces by educators, a blues musician, a humorist, a peace advocate, a historian, a farmer, a psychotherapist and a high school student, and an interview with recent immigrants. Each issue will have a theme – this one is Conflict, Diplomacy and a Place We Call Home.

The Commonwealth Tree also offers you the opportunity to express yourself in its pages. In fact, this journal will rely on written contributions from people from all walks of life, anyone with a compelling idea or a meaningful story. Click on “Contribute Your Writing” below, for information on how to add your thoughts to this journal. Then read "Themes of Future Issues" for subjects about which to write.

Every day we’re hit with messages of division, in the media and our communities, in politics and between one another. Yet there’s much that we have in common. Our ways of approaching beliefs and desires may be different, but we all have a fundamental need to know – the who, what and why of our existence, and the how of relating to other people. The vitality of our lives, of our organizations and communities, relies on a dynamic exchange of ideas. Sometimes there will be friction. But what’s worse is the loss of communication, for lack of conviction or trying.

Our future is created by the ways we live now. It comes from how we examine our beliefs, consider the beliefs of others, and how we choose to act in our communities.

The Commonwealth Tree is a public space, a town square of sorts, where people can meet, learn about one another and share their ideas. Opinions are welcomed, but not necessary. You can contribute stories or experiences, as they relate to the themes of the issues. You’re encouraged to read and consider, and to give something of yourself to a public discourse, to the commonwealth.

CONTRIBUTORS

Tony Ends:
The Key to Resolving Church Conflict

Roberth Enright:
Forgiveness as a Path to Peace

Anamari Golf:
The Big Parade

Ted Kinnaman:
Hope and the Ways of War

Raymond Lesser:
Pies for Peace

Glenn Davis Meine:
Letter from a Bluesman

New Neighbors:
Interview with Immigrants

Teresa Pham:
The Definition of Independence

John Rapp:
Chevy Vegas and Ford Pintos

Deke Rivers:
Epiphany

Guy Shilts:
We're Still Learning How to Communicate