Sunday, February 22, 2009

Green versus clean = comunitarians versus locals

All of my happiest childhood experiences happened in the woods or at the beach. My parents took us camping every summer and sometimes we spent our entire spring break in state campgrounds. The first thing we did after we chose our spot was pick up all the garbage and cigarette butts, rake up the loose leaves and tree fall, pile it all up in the fire pit and start out with a big cleansing fire. We checked out the lavatory facilities and if they were inadequate, we dug our own latrines. We fixed broken picnic tables, made benches and swings. We cleared trails, pulling obnoxious and poisonous plants. Axes and machetes were part of our gear. The point was always to make the site better and safer. Cleaning the camp was the first and the last thing we did. I've repeated this process of rejuvenating public campsites my entire adult life. And silly me, this is what I thought it meant to be "green."

All my life I thought being green meant being clean.


Throughout the late 80s and during the entire 90s, I began describing my politics as libertarian-socialist-feminist-green! I've written at length about my harsh, rude awakenings to the foundations for libertarian, socialist and feminist political ideologies. It's all out there for anyone who's interested in seeing how painful a journey the ACL was for me. But I haven't written a lot about my personal "green" ideals because I've been camping practically all these ACL years. And, few things have shocked me as much as the signs around Chitina State Park that said I wasn't allowed to cut anything! There were hundreds of dead cottonwoods and beetle killed spruce. The Chitina Native Council had a grant to go along the roads and around houses doing "fuel reduction." So, it wasn't as if the local tribal people who control most of the unused land weren't aware of the need to clear out the dead stuff. I just wasn't allowed to do it unless I was paid by the feds. Our friend Roger summed it up for me one day with, "If there's ever a fire here, we're all gonna be crispy critters."

Last summer I moved back to Camp Redington and started out cleaning my own mess from the year before (heh) and then I started in on all this low brush where those nasty black mosquito's live. I had just learned to use a chainsaw so I was busy cutting off all the low tree branches while I was digging up and raking piles of molding layers of leaves and tree fall. But, I've become so conditioned to the greens' agenda that when a big official truck pulled in the driveway after we were burning, I thought he was here to give Tim a TICKET! I had my whole defense going through my brain... I was going to explain how I wasn't "destroying" anything but only making it better for humans. As it turned out, the official was the Alaska STATE Department of Forestry, and he was HAPPY to see what I was doing. He gave me a brochure produced by the state that trains people in safe fire prevention, and clearing low brush around homes and making fire brakes on the edges of property is taught as absolutely vital to protecting life and property. I had an enormous sense of relief to learn our state government still uses reason to determine public policy. Of course the state doesn't manage the "protected" federal and Indian lands (the CR Watershed if you will) which surrounds us, and that could prove to be a fatal mistake, as it has become in Australia. I can only imagine the level of frustration being felt over there. Thanks for sending this Pete, I read it a few days ago and decided to not write about it, but yeah, it's key:

"It wasn't climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria last weekend. It wasn't arsonists. It was the unstoppable intensity of a bushfire, turbo-charged by huge quantities of ground fuel which had been allowed to accumulate over years of drought," writes Devine.
http://freedomgraffiti.blogspot.com/2009/02/not-climate-change-not-arsonists-but.html

Do you think people in Australia would be interested in knowing the green "laws" that caused this tragedy are based in EU environmental communitarian "case" law? This applies to the recent issue of whether it is worth the time to focus on smaller issues without addressing the "big" picture.

Many Australians I know are proud of having a socialist government. Many Americans I know are proud of having a constitutional government. They do not know they both have a communitarian government, just like everywhere else in the world where environmental communitarian laws overrule local laws. That's the simple version of what communitarian law does. It is "supreme" law used by heavily funded activists who force it on locals. Locals, under a communitarian system, are stupid hicks who have to be taught how to bow, honor, obey and cherish "Mother Earth."

It's high time we "clean up the green mess" and restore power to locals, everywhere. In the USA, the FBI lists Earth First and other radical environmental organizations as "terrorists." http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/article.php?id=132 I think that should give locals license to start treating them like the death threats that they are. The next time one of these committed Gaia worshippers tries to block firefighters or loggers or fishermen or anyone else doing their local job, which is to feed and protect local people, they could and probably should face swift and necessary battlefield justice.

Giving locals information about the new legal system which created this global green mess might be a handy tool in the arms of a righteous local population. I know this is why the very term "communitarian law" has been stricken from public awareness.

And Pete, I wrote a short note to Peter Myers on facebook to see if there are any requirements for "local coordination" in Australia. He sent it out to his list.

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