Dear HCN,
Sierra Club leader
Michael McCloskey was correct when he told his board that community
collaboration processes “have the effect of transferring influence
to the very communities where we are least organized and potent.”
He went on to note that local environmentalists often lack
experience, training, skills and money.
So what
is the correct response? Opposition to “local control’? No!
Instead, the Sierra Club, other national groups and foundations
need to focus more of their resources on supporting those local
environmental activists. The Sierra Club prides itself on being one
of the few truly grassroots national environmental organizations,
but too few of its members’ dollars end up in the hands of the
club’s state chapters and local groups. I still belong to the club
because we have a substantial and growing grassroots component, but
it’s simply insufficient.
I dropped my membership
in Natural Resources Defense Council, despite their excellent
publication, The Amicus Journal, and their solid record of
accomplishment. They sent out information about their “new
grassroots programs,” but I did not believe
them.
Opponents of “local control” correctly
attack a long history of abuse of land and communities. How much of
that abuse was from local people who callously disregarded the
needs of the land and communities? How much came from simple,
correctable ignorance? And what of the role of colonialism? Wasn’t
it the big corporations and financiers from “back East” who dealt
many – perhaps most – of the serious blows to our
ecosystems?
“Local folks’ – human individuals –
can learn and change because they have multiple values, including
morals, ethics, religion, community, family and profit. In
contrast, big corporations have only one value. Experience in my
community has shown that the most serious threats have come from
big interests from outside. Not that we locals do no harm, but it
appears here that people with old, local roots have wreaked much
less of the harm, and can change. I learned that with rancher Ken
Spann, logger Buck Bailey, and motorcyclist Morrill Griffith, I can
negotiate and even influence. With AMAX and Louisiana Pacific, I
can only fight.
This extends to the government. I
don’t understand why my colleagues in Denver and Boulder place
their hopes for good management with the Forest Service. I can
think of only a few examples of wise decisions from that agency in
the past 16 years of the Gunnison National Forest. The agency
responds primarily to commands from D.C. And who controls D.C.? Big
money. Money has a much smaller role in local
elections.
The environmental movement has put too
many of its eggs into the national basket, following power to
Washington, D.C. Congress members are not elected in Washington,
D.C. They are elected “back home,” so lobbying is at best a
secondary tactic. National laws and actions are critical, but
require state and local implementation. It’s a question of balance,
and I believe in local influence, not local
control.
So we in Gunnison County have devoted
more attention to our county government. It’s been a long, tough
task with limited success. Our commissioners still inadequately
protect wetlands, still spend unwisely, still can’t get over their
allegiance to the ideology of private property. But they have
positively evolved, along with our local populace. We are gradually
winning the hearts and minds of our people, and the county is
slowly reflecting that change. Meanwhile, the Forest Service, well,
they still serve up clearcuts to multinationals like Stone
Container, despite local governments’ opposition to big
logging.
Opponents of “local control” seem to
hope that the urban majority will eventually trounce the rural
minority. But that has not worked and lacks compassion. The
urban-dominance strategy legitimately provokes fear among rural
people, for it implies that social forces will finally deny them
their traditional occupations and pastimes. When the vision of the
environmental leadership is simply to kick the commodity interests
off the land, then we offer no economic hope to millions of
people.
Gary
Sprung
Crested Butte,
Colorado
The writer is
president of the High Country Citizens’
Alliance.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Winning hearts and minds through local action.
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