Putting a bullet to the head of "America": November 8th, 2016

It is as gray and rainy in Northeast Pennsylvania this morning as befits the desolation of my mood. 

I ricochet between slack-jawed paralysis and an outrage that makes bloodless white-knuckled balls of my fists. 

The latter is better.

I reached out my front door to pick up my newspaper, and it occurred to me that I am now afraid of my neighbors. 

I'm afraid, and anyone who values reason should be, of anyone--everyone--who voted for Donald Trump.

They have elected the darling of the white supremacist, the Ku Klux Klan--the idolator of the lynch mob.

They have chosen a war-loving fascist whose "America First!" betokens an country with no place for civil discourse, for dissent, for self-reflection, or for humility.

They have deemed fit for the most powerful office of the land a man who regards half the human population as disposable fuckable toys.

They have chosen to condemn women who'd seek abortions to "some form of punishment" or hemorrhage.
 
They have authorized to speak for us a man who thinks reckless bravado signifies strength, that flag-wrapped warheads demonstrate patriotism, and who dog-whistles the "law and order" of the loaded gun.

They have chosen torture as a legitimate form of negotiation.

They have chosen surveillance, repression, paranoia, and that bitter flavor of institutionalized violence that would as soon eat its own entrails as acknowledge the humanity of "the other."

They have chosen the xenophobic white patriarchy of the "America" of the Commerce Clause, Citizens United, and the Panama Papers.

They have elected to privatize and commodify everything.

They have chosen that polite euphemism called a "trade war," you know--that "deal-making" that will make us nostalgic for the Transpacific Partnership's gentler kinder rape of the developing world.  

They have embraced that stinking religious bigotry that burns down the "other's" place of worship in the name of their vengeful god.

Ironic, they bill themselves as "Constitutionalists," but personify bottomless civic illiteracy.

More ironic, they'll burn down the house that is their own country to "Make America Great, again." 

They cannot tell the difference between a tabloid story about alien abduction and the science of anything-at-all, and they choose the former because it's more salacious. 

Their country is an episode of Jerry Springer: blowing it up is a reasonable solution to boredom.

We'll wring our hands about how this election reflects the "discontent of the hard-working white laboring classes," how the collapse of the manufacturing base has blighted this silent majority, compelling them to vote for change.

Bull shit to that. 

Economic hardship needn't seek scapegoats. It can unionize. It had heroes in decent human beings like Bernie Sanders. And they chose hatred instead.

And this time these folks didn't have to go looking for others to blame: Trump gave to every white man regardless his fortunes license to  invert the facts of history and see himself as a victim--a newly recruited soldier in the Great White Army ready to build The Wall.

Truth is--Trump has grabbed every white male sucker who voted for him by the pussy. But that warm little squeeze will quickly become a stone-cold vice once the euphoria starts to wear off. 

All but the whitest and wealthiest will be fucked. For Donald Trump is a liar of the most cancerous sort. He lies to himself. And then he lies to you. And then you wait for things to get better. They won't. 

That white nationalist may be patting himself on the back this morning,  smacking his wife on the ass and telling her to like it. 

But thinking he's won the lottery isn't going to bring back even one manufacturing job.

It's not going to put more coal in the ground.

It's not going to bring a single multinational corporation to heal. 

Nope. And the turgid greasy resentment he already feels is just going to fester once he figures that out.

Morning in America:

Hate. Crimes.

Rape.

Homophobia.

The militarization of everything.

The celebration of willful ignorance.

The gutting of public education in the name of "choice."

The deterioration of the last thin threads of civil public discourse.

Emergency room healthcare for those who cannot afford to be rimmed by health insurance profiteers.

Elderly folks who die held hostage by pharmaceutical companies.

Indigenous peoples whose lands and artifacts are ground-up by the backhoes of the fossil fuel behemoths.

Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

The continuation of a two-party system that makes a mockery of democracy.  

The debauchery of the United State's Supreme Court.

Global disbelief.


And worst of all:

To elect a megalomaniacal Troglodyte like Donald J. Trump is like hurling a Molotov Cocktail at the planet.

Global warming needs no accelerant.


Wendy Lynne Lee

Trees Can Be Trees, Or Trees Can be Money: The Holleran's Sugar Bush and the Constitution Pipeline

What makes the destruction of the Holleran family Sugar Bush all the more head-shakingly sad--and predictable--is the profound misunderstanding of in what, as minimum conditions, a 21st century movement for ecological integrity must consist, of what it must mean by "the local is the global, and "the global is the local." 

To be sure, no slogan is worth a tinker's damn until it informs the very bone marrow of our strategy and oxygenates the blood vessels of our resolve. It's thus not surprising that the consequences for things like trees and soil and all of the creatures and biota dependent on their intimate relationship are as predictable as the rasp of chainsaws and diesel engines the moment we accede to a worldview in whose vocabulary "global" and "local" are valued as property and revenue. 

And trees are especially important--to global climate, to animal habitat, to aesthetic experience.

 When they're reduced to commodities whose worth lay not in the integrity of their relationship to human communities, but in the capacity to be exploited and exchanged, we're all in trouble. 

Stop the Tennessee Pipeline, Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

What, in other words, we forfeit when we accept the worldview of the capitalist--for whom everything and everyone is either an obstacle or a potentially exploitable resource--is the right to be taken seriously when we try to make anything--like maple trees--an exception. We can deny that we accept these ideological premises, but we use the language of "property," and every time we do we signal the extent to which we're either woefully naive about the difference between the defense of property and the defense of an ecology, or we're willing to execute a strategy that, for the zillionth time, the oil and gas, the pipeline, the export industry, and the banks know will fail. 

It's not merely that we forfeit the moral high ground when, for example, we hold up "Stop the Pipeline!" signs for a family whose already tried to negotiate merely to move the right-of-way to protect their own property. 

It's that we forfeit the ground itself insofar as the pipeline company has every reason to believe we'd not be protesting "Stop the Pipeline!" in front of neighbors ready to wave the American flag over "their" piece of the Constitution.  

Tennessee Pipeline Cut. Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

If, in other words, we're going to defend ecological integrity, the human community--including families like the Hollerans--cannot be our single or even primary measure of value.  After all, the vast majority of such communities--including corporations--are more than willing to sacrifice ecology for property. 

It's just not true that community rights are necessarily consistent with ecological stability, and so long as we continue to defend the first conflating it with the second, we'll not only continue to mistake property value for ecological integrity, in so doing we'll continue to undermine the necessary conditions of our insurgency, namely, a planet that can sustain us.

Let me put this differently: so long as the primary foci of our protests are human beings to the exclusion of the ecologies upon which we're all dependent--whether that unit of value comes in the form of families like the Hollerans or neighborhoods, or corporations, or the state--property will continue to govern how we conceive what's worth defending. 

Truth is, where we human beings think we occupy the undisputed center of what constitutes value, all else can only be assessed in terms of what's useful to us. 

That's what we call "property."

The fossil fuel companies and the pipeliners know this; hell, they embrace it as surely as the sun rises on a denuded hillside. 

They know that if what matters to us is protecting property as property that we're essentially on their team, that everything's about negotiation and compensation.  

And once we're all on the same team, whatever claims protesters might make about "the environment," well, they just don't need to be taken seriously because nobody cares enough to lay siege, be arrested, be arrested en masse, be pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed, beaten, or shot to defend it. 

Negotiation and compensation: what's left to protest other than the money?

116 Environmental Activists killed in one year.

 And that's really it.

That the environment knows no property lines, or that the neighbor's property is just as much a part of the planetary environment as is anyone's, doesn't seem to register in anyone's calculation of value. 

That protesters virtually everywhere but in the U.S. are being murdered to insure the free flow of oil and gas doesn't seem to impact our misplaced confidence. We just don't seem to get it that these are the same companies, and that means we have to take the same risks as all these other brave folks to stop companies willing to spend billions to make more billions.

How do we not get this? The neighbor who waves his "Vote for Trump!" sign in front of a cheery tree-cutting crew is as irrelevant to the fact that the U.S. Constitution helps to facilitate the conversion of ecology into property as is my vote for Bernie Sanders--unless I am willing to take a stand for the integrity of my neighbor's trees--even if he doesn't like it. 

Even if he threatens me.

Even when, as a matter of strategy, we decry the abuse of the laws that govern eminent domain, we concede to the fossil fuel capitalist everything essential for him to win. The central concept of eminent domain is "property," it's central issue the what, when, and who of its disposition as a resource for human use. 

Is what happened to the Hollerans a grotesque abuse of these laws? 

Sure it is. 

Protest FERC, Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

 But that's irrelevant insofar as the family had already conceded to Williams precisely what empowered the company to take their land and mow down their sugar bush, namely, that trees are property, that what's needed is the right compensation for property loss. Once the Hollerans agreed to the terms of this "debate" over the where of the pipeline and the exchange value of the lost trees, they forfeited the right to defend the trees as trees. 

For example, 

Cathy Holleran said her family has sought a re-route for part of the pipeline onto a neighbor's land — a neighbor she said was not opposed. If that were to occur, she would be eager to agree to an easement that would spare the bulk of the maples. As for ancillary benefits from the pipeline, she was dubious.

"Somebody will benefit, but it won't be us because we are out here in the boonies," she said. "They're never going to pipe gas to our house. We don't even have cable TV." (http://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/2015/03/27/constitution-pipeline-landowners/70560802/)

Such a "re-route" will, of course, contribute every bit as much to climate change as the original route: the gas still gets to market. Moreover, it doesn't really matter whether the gas goes to the global markets or remains local; it's "ancillary benefits" involve the emission of greenhouse gases either way. Once, in other words, the trees were in the way of the pipeline, they could be trees or they could be money, but they could not be both, and the Hollerans chose the latter. At that moment, there never was any "Stop the Pipeline!" At least not at that juncture of the right-of-way.

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

 To those who'd argue that that calling out the abuse of eminent domain is an effective stalling strategy--that it can monkey wrench a project until relevant environmental or habitat protection laws stall it for another year (March 31st in the Holleran case)--sure. 

Perhaps this is what Catherine Holleran had in mind when she argued in a cease and desist letter dated February, 2016 that:

“We [the Holleran family] assert our [Fifth Amendment] rights, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, that we must receive compensation before eminent domain condemnation. As compensation hearings have yet to be held, we find any action to develop our property to be unconstitutional. We hope that your client will proceed with good faith negotiations with our counsel prior to any tree cutting, especially given their affinity for the name ‘Constitution Pipeline” (http://www.pikecountycourier.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20160210/OPINION03/160219997)

But this too has become a threadbare tactic in that we know FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) exists to permit pipelines, that judges execute laws written by and for an industry that poses an existential threat to human beings, nonhuman animals, and environmental stability. We know that the vocabulary of "property" and therefore "profit" will govern every aspect of this decision-making whether by the state or the industry. We know that the morally weighty distinction between a "vital public interest" and a "profit-seeking enterprise" is long lost not merely to corporate personhood, but to a long and hoary American history whose laws have privileged wealth over life from its inception. 

Part of what's so troubling here is that what the experienced protesters of the anti-fracking and anti-pipeline movements know is not necessarily what the Hollerans are in a position to know. 

The disconnect is quite striking: the Hollerans clearly seek to exhaust every avenue of a legal system stacked against them not for the sake of saving the maple trees per se, but for saving North Harford Maple (http://www.northharfordmaple.com/) that depends on them. 

The protesters claim to want to "Stop the Pipeline!" But these are obviously not the same thing; in fact, they're wholly opposed projects. 

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

Put differently: I don't begrudge the Hollerans a livelihood. But as a business dependent on a certain kind of property, maple sap, it's reasonable to ask what distinguishes their business from Williams other than the trivial difference (qua property) between maple sap and natural gas. 

If the answer to that question is "nothing" because the real issue is ecological integrity and not property, then why do the protesters defend the Holleran's quest for compensation? 

Why, in other words, aren't the protesters holding up signs that say "Move the Pipeline!" instead of "Stop the Pipeline!"? 

And if the answer to that question is because there's a world of difference between tapping sugar bush and building a high pressure pipeline--that it is about ecological integrity--why on earth are the protesters defending the Hollerans? 

The sad truth is that the Holleran's sugar maples were lost long before Megan Holleran, daughter and family spokesperson, was quoted in the Pike County Courier:

This is our land and family business. The pipeline has been years in permitting and we just staged our equipment to set up for this year’s syrup production. If they cut the trees now they would destroy our equipment and that’s criminal. That’s property destruction. We asked them to negotiate with our attorney before cutting and that hasn’t happened yet. I’m ready to stop them by standing in the right of way if they try. (http://www.pikecountycourier.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20160210/OPINION03/160219997)

 Here's why:

When Holleran appeals to the word "now," she implies that Williams could come later to cut down the trees--just not now while they need the trees to make money.

When Holleran appeals to the word "property," Williams knows that what the dispute is about is not trees, not an ecology, and not the biota of that land. What they know is that this is really all about money--the meaning of "property"-- and that the Hollerans are willing to play a very specific game of negotiation according to rules that privilege the pipeline company. Williams knows precisely who will win.

Tennessee Pipeline Cut. Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

When Holleran refers to negotiation with the family attorney, Williams knows that neither she nor any of the protesters are going to stand in the way of the tree-cutters once a judge has ruled in favor of the company's egregious abuse of eminent domain. Why? Because every one of the players in this story--including the protesters--has already agreed to the fundamental rules--that trees are property, maple syrup sites, a staging location for machinery. And with that, it all becomes a matter of whose property, for what use, for how long, and under what conditions.

Simply put: there's no such thing as "No Pipeline!" and "Move the Pipeline!" In the first case the pipeline doesn't get built; in the second it does.

If the Hollerans are victims, it's not of Williams; it's of the protesters who effectively used the family as an opportunity to stage one more "direct action" in the "fight" against the construction of natural gas pipelines. I don't doubt that the protesters were invited. I don't doubt that their motives were essentially good--if misbegotten. But once their leaders knew that this was about relocation and compensation--and never really about stopping the pipeline--why did they move forward? 

Was this about stopping a pipeline or preserving the appearance of a movement? 

Lastly, I have often heard the anti-fracking movement compared to the American Civil Rights movement. I've been tempted to that comparison myself. 

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

 But until we become unified and far clearer than we are now about the point of our protest, this comparison is odious.

Civil rights movement leaders may have argued among themselves about many things, but that the movement was about the fundamental dignity of human beings regardless ethnicity, heritage, geography or culture was not one of them. 

That human beings are not property is the governing principle of what we mean by civil rights--by human rights. That's what so many fought and died for during the Civil Rights movement.

We're apparently not that brave.

Until we are prepared to extend the fundamental idea of unimpeachable dignity to the defense of the planet--to treat it and its inhabitants with the respect owed beyond "property," we will not gain traction or win battles beyond the NIMBY-ism ascribed to us by the gas industry. 

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

 But that, of course, would mean deep-going alterations in the way we, especially in the wealthy North, live--and decisions far more difficult than whether or not to spend an afternoon or even a whole weekend holding up signs. 

But such meaningful alterations in our ways of life seem awfully hard to hope for among movement builders who'd "stop" a pipeline only to retire to eating a cow, a pig, a chicken.

Indeed, if we can't even see that the most vulnerable among our sentient fellows are not property, what hope is there for things like sugar bush?

Wendy Lynne Lee

Draft 2015 State Forest Resource Management Plan Professional Comments & Recommendations Kevin Heatley Restoration Ecologist

Shale gas operations, Tiadaghton State Forest, July 2014,
Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

Introductory note:

The following are the comments and recommendations of professional restoration ecologist Kevin Heatley concerning the ecological impacts of continuing natural gas industrial expansion in the forestlands of Pennsylvania. His analysis is as precise as it is substantive and should be taken very seriously, as it would not only dramatically curtail current gas extraction operations in the state, but alter the way we comprehend the value of these woodland ecosystems. 

***********************************************************

Kevin Heatley:

As a professional restoration ecologist who has worked on conservation planning and habitat enhancement projects nationwide, I want to thank the DCNR for the opportunity to submit comments concerning the Draft State Forest Resource Management Plan. I recognize that, due to political pressure from Harrisburg and the shale gas industry, the natural resource professionals within the DCNR have been put in a difficult position attempting to meet their mission of, “...ensuring the long-term health, viability, and productivity of the Commonwealth’s forests and to conserve native wild plants."

Shale gas development of both our public and private forestlands constitutes a transformative existential threat. It requires dispersed industrialization of the landscape on a level that insures widespread negative impacts to both ecological structure and function. It is important to recognize that landscape-level disruption and forest fragmentation is an intrinsic component of this industry. The extraction and transmission technologies currently utilized to exploit shale gas require infrastructure that directly and dramatically undermines both forest resilience and sustainability.

Shale gas exploitation poses a serious challenge for the DCNR. The peer-reviewed scientific literature is clear: forest fragmentation (the dissection of the forest into smaller parcels) reduces biodiversity by 13% to 75% and impairs key ecosystem functions by decreasing biomass and altering nutrient cycles (Haddad et al. Science Advances. 2015). It contributes substantially to forest degradation and species extinction worldwide. Forest fragmentation increases the amount of forest “edge” (the interface between forest and non-forest). 

This transitional zone is fundamentally different in structure and function from interior forest. Edge is characterized by increasing light levels on the forest floor, reduced soil moisture, and a high degree of biological invasion from non-native invasive organisms. These impacts can extend up to 300 feet into the adjacent forest and have direct economic implications for forest landowners. Invasive species, for instance, have been estimated to cost the US economy over $120 billion dollars per year (Pimentel,D., R. Zuniga, D. Morrison. Ecological Economics. 2005).

Interior forest (forest that is at least 300 feet from non-forest) is an increasingly rare habitat. As a species we are quite adept at creating edge with roads, shopping malls, utility ROW, etc. Edge habitat can be created overnight, whereas interior forest takes decades to create. As a central component of unconventional oil and gas extraction, dispersed industrialization is proceeding across vast areas of the US without consideration of the cumulative impacts to forest connectivity. In our region the USGS, using spatial analysis with GIS software, has recently demonstrated that natural gas infrastructure is being placed disproportionally within interior forest systems. 

Penn’s woods are rapidly being 

converted into Penn’s woodlots.

As a specialist in terrestrial ecology and invasive species, I have performed a professional review of the Draft State Forest Resource Management Plan and submit the following observations and recommendations;

FOREST FRAGMENTATION:

The listed goal – “Forest fragmentation, connectivity and patch distribution will be considered in management decisions affecting state forest resources” is a soft target and inadequate to stem the escalation of fragmentation that is currently occurring. While I applaud the DCNR for its efforts to undertake a core forest analysis, this type of baseline information should have been collected prior to the initiation of shale gas infrastructure placement.

Recommendations:

I would strongly suggest the following additional goals with respect to forest fragmentation: 

1) No net loss in core forest within the state forest system of land holdings.  

2) All management decisions affecting forest connectivity and fragmentation will incorporate a full spatial evaluation of landscape dynamics on forest land (both public and private) adjacent to the state forest system.  

3) Shale gas infrastructure shall not be located within core forest patches.

INVASIVE SPECIES:

The threat of biological invasion by non-native organisms is inadequately addressed within the plan. We know from the science that invasive species and biological invasion is facilitated by both disturbance and physical vectoring mechanisms. It is also directly tied to the increase in edge that accompanies the expansion of both ROW and hardscape. Shale gas exploitation, by its very nature, requires the movement of vast amounts of soil and stone, along with the importation of labor and equipment from various areas across the United States. This is a clear recipe for biological invasion.

Recommendations:

1) Given the long term threat to both biodiversity and forest regeneration - Invasive species suppression and management should have a separate set of goals and objectives. 

2) The Guidelines for the Administration of Shale Gas Development on State Forest Lands need to be aggressively updated with respect to invasive species suppression. For instance – the current guidelines only address invasive management within the physical limits of construction. Given the science connecting the creation of edge habitat with the proliferation of invasive species the area of invasive monitoring and suppression should include the 300 foot zone in the forest adjacent to the actual infrastructure footprint. 

3) Given that forest edge, by its very nature, promotes biological invasion of undesirable species, edge management should be the responsibility of the entity creating the disturbance conditions and should continue for the entire service life of the infrastructure.

RESTORATION:

The current draft is substantially inadequate with respect to addressing the ecological restoration of degraded lands. It is logically inconsistent that the DCNR has effectively halted the extraction of coal and other minerals from land that has not previously been degraded due to the difficulty in restoring these sites yet it allows the development of shale gas infrastructure without full restoration planning in advance. Given the spatial distribution of the shale exploitation it is critical that ecological restoration and the promotion of an eventual closed canopy be fully budgeted for prior to any site disruption.

Recommendations:

1) As in the DCNR document “Guidelines for Administering Oil & Gas Activity on State Forest Lands” (revised 2013) the State Forest Resource Management Plan should clearly define and delineate the distinctions between ecological restoration and land reclamation. True ecological restoration replaces the full suite of structural and functional values that existed in the biotic community prior to site disturbance. Reclamation, in contrast, merely attempts to stabilize the site against soil erosion by planting an early successional palate of forbs and grasses. 

2) According to the DCNR’s 2014 Shale Gas Monitoring Report ecological restoration has not occurred on any shale gas infrastructure site. The report also documented a loss of 9,242 acres of core forest. In order to protect the ecological integrity and future resiliency of our state forest ecological restoration should be a stated goal under the Geologic Resources Management Principle. 

3) As an objective under the ecological restoration goal - No shale gas infrastructure should be allowed to be developed within a currently forested system without an approved ecological restoration plan in place. Such a plan must utilize a local reference ecosystem as a template, include detailed projections for budget and implementation, and require active monitoring and maintenance until closed canopy conditions are achieved.

MONITORING:

The DCNR relies heavily on the concept of adaptive management - monitoring the impacts of shale gas development and subsequently adjusting management guidelines based upon the results of this monitoring (Geologic Resources, Goal #4, Objectives 4.2, 4.4, 4.5) Unfortunately adaptive management is inadequate when dealing with non-linear systems that may be subject to threshold levels of change. An ecological system may respond to a disturbance with a sudden, catastrophic shift to a new baseline state without displaying gradual and detectable indicators of change. After breaching the threshold the energy inputs required to reestablish the original conditions may be so high as to preclude correction. Adaptive management is ill-suited to this type of non-linear dynamics.

Recommendation:

1) The use of the Precautionary Principle should be adopted as a key objective under Geologic Resources Goal #4. Currently not mentioned anywhere within the Draft State Forest Management Plan, the Precautionary Principle places the burden of proof to show an action will result in no significant harm upon the agent wishing to undertake that action. When the scientific data is not available regarding baseline conditions or ecosystem response, the action should not be allowed to occur. For example – no gas infrastructure should be allowed to be placed within watersheds with class A and wilderness trout streams until the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission has completed its statewide assessment of previously unassessed waters.

CLIMATE CHANGE:

The climatic change associated with anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions threatens to radically complicate the science of natural resource management. Cascading ecological impacts are likely as the phenology of both plant and animal lifecycles is disrupted. Spatial shifts in the natural range of forest species should be anticipated, as should be the challenges associated with increasing incursions of invasive species. The DCNR is to be applauded for incorporating goals and objectives with respect to climate change in the Draft State Forest Management Plan.

Recommendations:

1) The protection and fostering of forest connectivity should be included as a clear climate change adaptation objective under Goal #1. Forest connectivity is critical to facilitating the migration of animal and plant populations. 

2) The development of a carbon budget, one that includes the greenhouse gas emissions associated with shale gas exploitation, for the state forest system should be included as an objective under Goal #2. The development of a carbon budget will help assure that the state forest system is being managed as a carbon sink as opposed to a source of greenhouse gas emissions.

ECOSYSTEM BASED MANAGEMENT:

While the DCNR has made important strides over the last several years in shifting overall management goals and objectives towards an ecosystem-based perspective, the agency should embrace a central component of ecological science that has direct managerial implications – the concept of Carrying Capacity. Carrying capacity can be defined as the number of individuals or the amount of an activity that an environment can support without significant negative impacts to the given organism and/or its environment. While natural resource and land managers have long successfully utilized this concept in modeling harvest levels of wildlife and other forest resources, it also has direct relevance to the exploitation of non-renewable resources such as shale gas.

Recommendation:

1) In order to assure long term forest sustainability the exploitation of shale gas must be kept to a spatial and temporal scale that does not disrupt the regenerative capacity and biodiversity of our forest resources. Modeling this threshold level of ecological disturbance is a scientific problem, not a political question. Until the ecological carrying capacity of this activity is determined the Precautionary Principle should drive DCNR management decisions regarding the exploitation of geologic resources.I again thank the DCNR for the opportunity to review the Draft State Forest Resource Management Plan. The continued viability of Pennsylvania’s forests, both public and private, is dependent upon the sound application of good ecological science. I sincerely hope my recommendations will assist in this endeavor.

Sincerely, Kevin Heatley Restoration Ecologist Bloomsburg, Pa.

Literature Cited:

Haddad, N.M., L.A. Brudvig, J. Clobert, K.F. Davies, A. Gonzalez, R.D. Holt, T.E. Lovejoy, J.O. Sexton, M.P. Austin, C.D. Collins, W.M. Cook, E.I. Damschen, R.M. Ewers, B.L. Foster, C.N. Jenkins, A.J. King, W.F. Laurance, D.J. Levey, C.R. Margules, B.A. Melbourne, A.O. Nicholls, J.L. Orrock, D.-X. Song, and J.R. Townshend. 2015. 

Habitat fragmentation and its lasting impact on Earth’s ecosystems. Science Advances 1, e1500052.

Pimentel, D., D. Morrison, R. Zuniga. (2005).

Update on the environmental and economic costs associated with alien-invasive species in the United States. 

In: Ecological Economics. RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:52:y:2005:i:3:p:273-288.

Community Rights or Games of Thrones? Response to Thomas Linzey, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Comments Posted at :

http://inthesetimes.com/rural-america/entry/18329/the-myth-of-community-rights

Thomas Linzey of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) certainly makes a persuasive argument with respect to the plainly undemocratic effectively dictatorial powers wielded by corporations. He is also, I think, dead-on concerning the very limited scope of recent court decisions that provide, as he puts it, only ephemeral success to municipalities--communities that have earnestly sought to act in the best interest of their constituents. 

But there are serious problems--and they come to this:

Linzey doesn't go far enough to articulate either what is a community or--and intimately related--where the powers of a community ends and those of a state or federal government are legitimately exercised.

These are crucial issues. Here are just a few examples:

1. What in Linzey's argument prevents a community of the very wealthy from advancing a bill of rights that bans, say, fracking infrastructure within that community--but leaves open the possibility that the municipality nearby--one inhabited by poorer folks with fewer resources--will become a sacrifice zone?
In other words, what in this argument bars me from defining "community" as the economic bastion of the wealthy--at the expense of the less well-to-do? 
What prevents "community rights" from simply deteriorating into a version of NIMBY-ism for those who can afford the lawyers? 
This is no idle question. 
I have watched first hand--over and over--in Pennsylvania communities of the working class become the fracking cesspools of the gas industry--all the while communities better off win (however brief) respite from this industrial assault.

2. What in Linzey's argument prevents a community from adopting grossly unjust statutes such as one that condones slavery or one that effectively dispossesses women? Linzey might respond that because such statutes are intrinsically inconsistent with the concept of equality and justice, they'd never pass muster within any legitimate constitution. 
But this response is inadequate since 

(a) Linzey already effectively accedes to economic/class divisions by omission (see (1)), and 

Photo Wendy Lynne Lee, May 2015

(b) like Ancient Greece, it is entirely within the self-accorded rights of a community to determine what counts as a "member." What, in other words, prevents a community from defining membership in terms of, say, sex, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation/identity--or class? What, in fact decides even whether "community" need be geographically bounded? (in which case, all bets are off with respect to any democratic principles governing membership).

3. What in Linzey's argument prevents a community from adopting grossly unjust statutes governing, for example, speech or other forms of expression? 
Could a community whose majority of members want a fracking ban vote to silence or exile opposing members? 
Do communities have the right to censor their membership if that member's speech is perceived as a threat to the integrity or cohesion of the community? 
Who's authorized to make these determinations in particular cases?

4. Finally--and what 1-3 clearly add up to: what is the legitimate place of the state or federal government with respect to its relationship to communities? 
This is thorny to be sure--but what does Linzey envision--a confederation of loosely knit but entirely independent communities as opposed to a "united states"? 
What happens when the action of one community poses potential harm to another? 
For example, do communities really have the right to decide against vaccines? 
Do they really have the right to erect barriers to keep out "strangers"? 
Should every community be responsible for its own militia? 
What about a community who wants as many frack pads and pipelines as they can squeeze in--at the direct cost of water contamination for their neighbors? 
What of the community who wants to build a flood wall--and makes their poorer neighbors the victims of the next hurricane? 
What about a community that determines it's in their best interest to make a communal living off puppy mills? 
Rare earth mineral extraction? 
Can communities impose a religion on their members? 
Can communities impose any variety of qualification for membership? 

Who decides that?

What Linzey appears to assume is that every community presented with the option would--suitably educated--reject energy industrialization (or factory farms or pharmaceutical manufacture, or Monsanto, etc). 
But this is clearly not the case. 
In fact, the opposite is true--and that is among the reasons we do not have any cohesive movement in the U.S. that would undertake the revolution he calls for. In fact--a loose confederation of not-necessarily-cohesive communities might actually agitate against that revolution--deteriorating into a panoply of special interest enclaves as opposed to communities of genuinely democratic citizens. 

And that's a game of thrones--not a place anyone with any sense wants to live.

These are just a few of the admittedly tough philosophical questions that CELDF needs to address. 
But they're not merely philosophical--real people, real nonhuman animals, and real ecologies can be harmed immensely by communities, and appealing to community rights will be no panacea to prevent this. 
There is a place for larger government. 
I don't think Linzey denies this--but he also doesn't spell out what--or where--this is. 
And without it, no revolution will be possible. 
Or, perhaps better: a confederation of "communities" can certainly generate the conditions of violent sectarianism just as readily as democratic decision-making. 
How does Linzey assure us that we'll get the second in the course of the revolution he proposes?

I agree with Linzey that corporatist domination must end. 
But it's end will not by itself usher in a new day for democracy.

That revolution demands much much more.

Wendy Lynne Lee

Professor

Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

wlee@bloomu.edu/https://bloomu.academia.edu/WendyLee