Things People Say

(Three Sheets NW)

The companion to this blog is a weekday news clipping blog, Salish Sea News and Weather, that draws comments on the issues and items highlighted. Some comments come by personal email and are worthy of being shared, sans names.

In regards to the story by Deborah Bach, New bill makes it easier for big boats to visit Washington waters, a reader writes: “I can sympathize with those cash strapped 1%ers who can't afford a pilot to move their megayaghts.  After all, who can afford $150 to go to the marina gas station when you are buying hundreds or thousands of gallons of fuel?  Those pilots are overpaid anyway, and seriously, who really cares if a couple smaller craft get run over in the process, or a few drops of oil spilled from the occasional collision with submerged reefs?  It’s actually their fault for being in the way.  Now if we could just get the Corps to blast away the remaining rocky reefs, we wouldn't even need GPS and sonar to drive these rigs!   Making those cocktails on the bridge so much sweeter.”

And, our reader continues, regarding orca scientist Ken Balcomb’s guest editorial about the death of L112 (Sooke),  Bombing range or sanctuary? One in the same for endangered orcas, “Speaking of blasts, Ken Balcomb's comments are right on the money.  Sounds like the Navy gets away with whatever it wants, as long as they don't have to produce real evidence. “

My comment: Like getting away with murder.

Regarding a guest editorial that wasn’t highlighted in the daily news clippings (WHATCOM VIEW: Infill meets Bellingham's goal of no development sprawl by Linda Twitchell of the Building Industry Association of Whatcom County), a reader wrote: “...the op-ed in the Bellingham Herald ... reminded me of a conversation that took place at a recent meeting of the PSP’s (Puget Sound Partnership’s) Ecosystem Coordination Board.  Will Hall from Shoreline and Linda Berry-Maraist from Poulsbo (both local elected officials) were bemoaning the lack of environmental support for in-filling and made some very compelling arguments.  Linda said “there’s 2 things people hate, density and sprawl” and it was right on. They called Tom Bancroft and Chris Davis to task for not doing more to get the environmental community to support good high density projects in urban and urbanizing areas.  I think this is a really ripe topic for debate and will look for other articles on that point that might be worth sharing with your circles.”

Agreed. This is a very good point to discuss and reading Linda Twitchell’s piece is a good place to start. The Padden Creek development proposal is within the Bellingham city limits but neighbors don’t want the density. The city does not support expanding its urban growth boundary into an adjacent watershed. In the meantime, Whatcom County and cities are trying to work together on planning issues like urban growth areas and the annexation of them into city limits. (Whatcom council approves urban planning agreements with seven cities) Included in the agreement between the county and the city of Bellingham is a provision allowing for mitigating wetlands loss within the city by creating wetlands in the county. Activist Wendy Harris asked that the section be deleted: “Our goal should be urban infill, not infill at any cost.”

What might you have to say?

--Mike Sato

San Juan County Council Says “Yes!” To BLM Lands Protection

Watmough Bight (Susan Muckle)

The San Juan County Council voted unanimously this morning to send a letter to the Interior Department supporting permanent protection of Bureau of Land Management lands in the islands.
NEWS RELEASE:

Islanders Thank San Juan County Council For Unanimously Supporting Permanent Protection of Local BLM Lands

San Juan County islanders thanked its county council today for unanimously supporting permanent protection of local Bureau of Land Management federal properties in the islands. The county council voted to send a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Washington congressional delegation expressing their support of either congressional action or presidential proclamation to achieve federal protection.

“We thank the council for its leadership and thank the many, many people who have expressed their support,” said Asha Lela, chair of the group Islanders for a San Juan Islands National Conservation Area. “We will continue to make sure that there is permanent protection for the BLM lands and that islanders are involved in the management of these lands.”

Asha Lela and other concerned citizens have been working for several years on federal legislation seeking permanent protection for the BLM lands in the San Juan Islands with a strong community voice in their management.

Congressional legislation to permanently protect the BLM lands as a National Conservation Area was introduced by Rep. Rick Larsen and Sen. Maria Cantwell but has been stalled in Congress.

Most recently, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and BLM officials have discussed permanent protection of the federal lands through presidential proclamation based on the congressional legislation and working with local elected officials and citizens.

For more information, contact Islanders For A San Juan Islands National Conservation Area, www.SanJuanIslandsNCA.org 

Watching The Grass Grow

March came in like a wild boar and went out like a damp puppy. We had rain Saturday night, snow on Sunday morning, then sunshine later in the day.

Next year we take out all the lawn, but ths year we gave in and had Andy’s lawn care crew cut the grass last week. I swear that on Sunday afternoon I could hear the grass growing.

I don’t think I was supposed to be able to see it grow.

The web site Watching Grass Grow: The most exciting/boring web site in the world says, “While the time-lapse photography on the main grass growing page clearly shows ... grass growing ... it actually doesn't grow fast enough for the human eye to detect. In a week, grass may grow 2-6 inches (depending on temperature, humidity, time of year, etc.). So do the math - that works out to about a thousandth of in inch every 15-20 minutes ... would be hard to see! ;-) “

Ah, Spring.

--Mike Sato

Baja Travels With Carl Safina and John Steinbeck

Mexican Green Turtle (Photo by Eddie Kisfaludy)

I’ve been enjoying this month two fine accounts of voyages of discovery along the Baja Mexico coasts.

Over the last week, Carl Safina’s been posting reports from Laguna San Ignacio and Punta Abreojos on the Pacific side of the peninsula while filming for his TV series Saving the Ocean.

Grey whales, of course, but also some observations about how whale watching is regulated. “A world Biosphere Reserve, the whale-watching is limited to core areas, with other areas off-limits. Sixteen boats, max, can use the whale-watching area at any one time, and only for an hour and a half. A guard, hired by the tour operators, “to keep it a nice experience,” says Jesus, polices the rules. The boat operators are skilled at letting the whales set their own perimeters. The boats don’t chase or hassle them here.”

At Punta Abreojos, Safina reports on a “60-year-old fishing cooperative so oriented to conservation and sustainable fishing—and to patrolling their area against outside pirate-fishing—that their catch has been certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council.” The catches of the day are red rock lobster and kelp bass, and a visit to an abalone breeding program.

At Estero Coyote, Safina describes an estuary “filled with migratory and nesting herons, shorebirds such as curlews, godwits and others, Ospreys, and fish. And Coyotes (we saw 3 on the sand flats in about an hour). And—sea turtles.”

My other Baja travels this month has been with John Steinbeck and The Log from the Sea of Cortez, written in 1941 describing the collecting expedition undertaken with Ed Ricketts in March and April in the other side of Baja, the Gulf of California. The account is a spirited mix of marine science, sociology, sailing, philosophy and religion written in a simpler time but a time on the brink of a second great war.

On March 31, Steinbeck wrote: “Our own interest lay in relationships of animal to animal. [A]ll life is relational to the point where...the feeling about species grows misty. One merges into another...until the time when what we know as life meets and enters what we think of as non-life: barnacle and rock, rock and earth, earth and tree, tree and rain and air.... It is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious...is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable... plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.”

-- Mike Sato

Two Cultures of Capitalism

March 20, 2012

The title ‘Two Cultures’ is originally from C.P. Snow’s essay delineating the conflict between science and humanities.

I thought about two different cultures Tuesday evening after returning from an informational meeting about the permitting process for the proposed coal export facility at Cherry Point, then turning on the TV and listening to Mitt Romney after his win in Illinois.

Romney’s message: America’s business is business. When government gets out of the way of business, business prospers. When businesses prosper, we all prosper.

According to Dave Gallagher in the Bellingham Herald, Peggy Zoro, the new executive director of the Northwest Economic Development Council in Whatcom County, sees the role of her council as helping businesses and industries remove large barriers that are keeping them from opening or expanding in Whatcom County— such as infrastructure needs or regulations that hurt different industries.

I’m sure the folks who oppose the coal terminal at Cherry Point aren’t against prosperity. It’s how you get to that prosperity that’s different.

Theirs is a prosperity where it’s a little bit clearer how everybody prospers and how nobody gets hurt in the process. It’s still capitalism but the culture is different.

This clash of cultures is what makes the process of doing a full environmental review before approving the construction of a coal export terminal in Whatcom County really interesting. You wouldn’t have this kind of clash of cultures for the coal export facility review in Longview, Washington, or Coos Bay, Oregon.

In Longview, the clock is still set at a time when this state’s economy was based on extractive industries using the shorelines and waterfronts of the Columbia River. That day has passed in Puget Sound and a proposal like a Gateway Pacific Terminal is like a throwback to another time, another age.

The scoping process and the environmental impact statement process and the decision making process are all regulatory safeguards put in place for approving or mitigating development in an extractive economy.

There are no regulatory safeguards developed yet for a new capitalist culture where everyone prospers and nobody gets hurt in the process.

Remember nuclear power in Washington state? In the ‘70s, it wasn’t a safety issue that defeated the building of a nuclear power plant in the Skagit. It didn’t pencil out economically. In the ‘80s, it wasn’t safety or environmental problems that brought the nuclear program of the Washington Public Power Supply System, or WPPSS or Whoops, to a crashing halt; it was cost overruns and the cost of nuclear power. The bottom line in a capitalist economy is the time value of money. Period.

Yesterday’s headline: “Worldwide coal slump worsening; Prices fall on global glut of supplies, decreasing demand.”

The battle over a coal shipping terminal at Cherry Point in Whatcom County is a battle between capitalist cultures. Both sides have smart people and financial resources. The process will take a few years. There will be elections of county officials in the meantime where the coal terminal proposal will be a pivotal campaign issue.

I’m betting the new cultural of capitalism wins in Whatcom County— and the old cultural of capitalism, and its coal terminal,  loses.

Stay tuned.

--Mike Sato 

"Laws are sand, customs are rock."

KING5 reports that opponents of gay marriage began circulating petitions today in an effort to block the state's new law and put the issue into the hands of voters in November.

“More than 120,000 signatures are needed by June 6 to get Referendum 74 on the ballot. If that happens, the law is put on hold until after the election. On the ballot in November, voters would decide either yes or no on gay marriage.... Voters may also find Initiative 1192 which, if approved, would define marriage in Washington as between only one man and one woman.”

A little over a month ago, McClatchy News Service reported that a Gallup poll in May 2011 “showed that 53 percent of Americans supported gay marriage, in a dramatic shift from 2004, when Massachusetts became the first state to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry and 59 percent of Americans favored a federal constitutional ban.  The states reflect the broader trend: Half of Marylanders support gay marriage, according to a Washington Post poll this week. According to a University of Washington poll in October, 55 percent of Washington state residents said they'd vote yes to uphold a gay marriage law.”

Public attitudes regarding gays have changed. I don’t think the legislature and the governor would have codified these cultural changes in a law recognizing gay marriage if the culture had not changed. Will taking the law to the ballot box change the culture? No. Will a public vote affirming the new law put an end to the opposition? Probably not, but the cultural change has already taken place.

Does legal challenge on social issues ever end, even when it’s clear that a major cultural change has occurred? You’d think it would but, seeing how some politicians have chosen to attack the issue of birth control, there doesn’t seem to be any accounting for bad sense.

In a Bloomberg National Poll conducted March 8-11, 77% of adults believed birth control SHOULD NOT be part of the national political debate. (20% thought it should; 3% were unsure)

To the question: "There has been recent controversy over whether education and health care facilities affiliated with religious organizations, such as the Catholic Church, should provide access to birth control through health insurance plans. Which of the following describes your view on this debate? ‘This is a matter of religious liberty ‘or ‘This is a matter of a woman's health and access to birth control’  62% said “a woman’s health” (33% said ‘religious liberty’ and 5% were unsure)

Our customs, our public attitudes, our values regarding gay marriage and birth control have changed. We are not going back. “Laws are sand, customs are rock.” That comes from a very short parable told by Mark Twain: The Gorky Incident (1906)  You’ll enjoy it.

--Mike Sato

Ignorant and Stupid People Vote, Too

"No, that's ignorant. They just don't know any better."

"I read in the LA Times that last weekend’s poll of Republican voters in Alabama and Mississippi found about half still believe President Obama is a Muslim and about 1 in 4 believes his parents’ interracial marriage should have been illegal.

I usually check my gut response by first reminding myself that polls, like statistics, can be used to show practically anything and  second, that the movie, Nurse Betty, makes a good, albeit rather violent, point about the difference between ignorance and stupidity.

Ignorant is not knowing any better; stupid is...well, stupid.

The world’s changed enough that I don’t worry too much any more about the interracial marriage issue. When I first moved to the back woods in the early ‘70s, Esther Borg used to refer to me as the “guy married to the white woman.” Esther’s dead now; my children are ‘mixed’ and my grandchildren even more ‘mixed.’  Long live miscegenation.

I’m not so sure about the religion issue.  I like when people get spiritual to bring us together, I don’t like when it’s used as some kind of credential to determine who’s in and who’s out.

As far as I’m concerned, the public good is not defined by Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu scripture— not in this country, my country.

Seems to me if someone says being a Mormon won’t determine how he will govern if elected or if someone says he is a Christian, then that should be good enough. So, now you know and to think otherwise would be...well, stupid.

But we also know it’s not what we know as much as what we believe that determines what we think and do. Ignorant and stupid people vote, too.

I might not like it but I wouldn’t have it any other way, not in this country, my country.

--Mike Sato