NIMBY and the Psychology of Protected Areas
December 2009
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
--Wendell Berry
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
--Wendell Berry
The Eastern Sierra is already a renewable energy colony of the rest of the state and a water colony of Los Angeles too. We already produce, use, and export electricity generated from dammed streams, deadened geysers, and dropping water tables.
But it isn't enough. Now renewable energy prospectors are looking for sites where they can build new dams and hydroelectric plants. There is a proposal for
wind turbines on Bald Mountain, in the Inyo National Forest. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is proposing a "Solar Park" for its lands on the east side of the Owens Valley. And the Coso Geothermal Plant just got approval to mine the groundwater in Rose Valley so it can continue to use water inefficiently, generating profit at the expense of spring-fed wetlands. All of these projects would generate "clean," renewable energy. All would have impacts on the land and the feeling of wildness, openness, untrammeled vistas, and remoteness that prevails in the Eastern Sierra. How does one balance these competing values?
Context is important. Details matter. It isn't whether you do something, but how you do it. NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) is an attitude that is often disparaged, but it is fundamentally good. I've always thought it should be NIABY - "Not in Anyone's Backyard." Local people caring about the areas in which they live is the first step in making everyone be a good neighbor. It is the lesson of Mono Lake's victory against Los Angeles: don't transfer problems to other areas. And don't mess up your neighbor's backyard just because you can. NIMBYs don't hold up progress--they enforce kindness and encourage innovation.
Our reasons for developing an area--or even protecting an area--are often because we are reacting or overreacting to a situation we've gotten ourselves into. If we hadn't messed up so much of our landscapes, and if there weren't so many of us, we wouldn't need to draw lines around so many protected areas. 50 years ago we were in desperate need of a Wilderness Act because we were messing things up so fast. It is necessary, but it isn't the only tool in the toolbox, in the same way that the Endangered Species Act isn't the only way to conserve biodiversity. But there are side effects--too much focus on single-species management ignores ecosystem management. And zoning protected areas encourages extremism--overprotection within the boundaries and underprotection outside of them.
Creating a Wilderness area or a National Park only has meaning when juxtaposed with the lack of protection of the surrounding areas. Drawing lines around protected areas is, in a psychological way, giving us permission to devastate (or at best ignore) the areas outside those lines. But we've gotten ourselves into a mess--so little "undeveloped" land is left that we want to protect it all. Soon it becomes an all-or-nothing fight to protect or leave unprotected every acre of "undeveloped" land. Even the word "undeveloped" is loaded psychologically--perhaps "undesecrated" would be a better term. We should not forget the equally important task of properly managing all land. Why should there be a National Scenic Area in the Mono Basin, but not in the Owens Valley, Rose Valley, or at Bald Mountain? Are not these other areas equally worthy of such protection? They are left unprotected by mere political and historical accident. Instead, why can't we draw a line around the whole world and try to protect our entire planet from poor decision-making? Or at least from desecration.
Sure, unique and sensitive and heavily-visited areas deserve recognition and some extra measure of protection. But the Wilderness battle unintentionally creates a mindset that outside these protected areas, anything is okay. We keep maintaining roads and dams built long before we had environmental laws, even if those are poor choices today. And we keep building more. But it isn't okay. Everywhere, we should be trying to be good neighbors. Everywhere, we should try to make smart decisions about land use, transportation systems, water systems, and energy systems. Zoning has its place, but equally important is a process for analyzing impacts and making good decisions on a project by project basis.
So in 2009, we are faced with "renewable" energy projects in "unprotected" areas--none of these proposals are for National Parks or Wilderness areas. But they will be seen from National Parks and Wilderness areas and change the feel of the region.
The real purpose of renewable energy development isn't to meet a greater demand for electricity--it is to rectify the horrible situation we've found ourselves in today with dangerous pollution and a rapidly warming climate. And as usual, the utilities and companies with proposals on the table are trying to do it in a way that makes them the most money. The public must involve itself to balance that profit motive with the civic good. The new renewable energy projects need to be connected to reducing the bad energy sources, or else we end up with our wild lands covered in development plus the old power plants still spewing dangerous pollutants. Energy conservation and efficiency should be prioritized--I'm using (net use after solar pv generation) about 1/3 of the electricity I used a decade ago--imagine if we all used 2/3 less energy! In addition, the projects need to be fully analyzed for their costs and benefits and reasonable alternatives. Why build new expensive and inefficient power lines to the Owens Valley when you can put solar panels on people's roofs, saving them money and saving 7% of the electricity (it would otherwise be lost in transmission)?
We should also keep in mind that 75% of the carbon emissions problem comes from outside the U.S. The U.S. should be a leader in developing sustainable, equitable, and just solutions that don't destroy the very wild lands that we are trying to save. Because there is a lot of work to do elsewhere once we take care of our own backyard, and we should set a good example that can be followed. The rest of the world is more heavily dependent on subsistence from wild ecosystems, so renewable energy projects will tend to displace more people there than in the U.S.
"We Americans cannot save the world...
We Americans have our hands full in trying to save ourselves.
And we've barely tried."--Edward Abbey
We Americans have our hands full in trying to save ourselves.
And we've barely tried."--Edward Abbey
John F. Kennedy said "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." You have to involve people in the things they care about because they will involve themselves one way or another. The water history of the Owens Valley is an excellent example.
Choosing between the lesser of two evils is a bad place for us to be. Yet we always seem to be facing these choices--our population and resource use seem to never stop growing so we keep putting ourselves in bad situations. Lets take ourselves out of that cycle and forge a new future that allows us to be a good neighbor to everyone's backyard and sensitive to everyone's needs. Lets use the public process to decide how these projects should go forward. Instead of competing for resources, lets cooperatively manage them. Bad projects shouldn't be put in my backyard (NIMBY), but also they should Not be put In Anyone's BackYard (NIABY).
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