Johannesburg
seems a world away, and the Earth Summit a world apart. Or so it seems to
Americans, thanks to our head of state, who — unlike 100 of his peers —
will not be attending.
But the summit is actually the most
local and immediate of events — for all localities worldwide, simultaneously.
That’s how I
see it,
anyway. Or rather, feel it. Yeah, we’re past the fin de siècle thing and Y2K, but Labor Day, the end of summer, and
the approaching fall make a guy reflective, even emotional about the subjects
he’s fated to write about.
So I’ve been thinking about the
Earth Summit and us. Specifically, I’ve been wondering what the summit’s
preoccupation, “sustainable development,” should mean for this regional home of
ours. How do we make the global conversation local? How do we reconcile
sustainability and growth? Are we doing concrete things to make our future
better? Will we ride out the ups and downs of global markets? Are we connecting
the dots between here and the world, and taking the “global village” seriously?
Have we got a clue?
Here are some bulleted “dots” to
chew on.
• I think we’ve hit a plateau on
environmental protection. This hits home when political candidates sloganize
cures for Upstate New York’s flat-lined economy. One big reason Upstate is
ailing is that our urban areas, and plenty of small towns as well, are
pockmarked with “brownfields.” These abandoned industrial properties, from the
Love Canal clones on down to erstwhile neighborhood dry cleaners, need to be
cleaned up — with the polluters paying for the job.
As things stand, businesses that
emit pollutants have a rock-hard incentive to relocate to pristine areas where
land is cheap and regulation slack; that often means out-of-state. So what do
we do about this? Mostly our leaders run a “race to the bottom” against other
jurisdictions. We need to quit the game. There are decent alternative models:
One of them is the restoration and conversion of old urban buildings to stores,
workshops, and apartments. But this is being done only piecemeal by private
developers. It needs to be public policy buttressed by a movement to resist
unnecessary or inappropriate projects outside the urban core.
• Housing, housing, housing. I mean
affordable, environmentally friendly, and accessible homes, not more
McMansions. A few years ago, an “Analysis of Impediments” to fair housing
prepared for the county, city, and two suburban towns said we didn’t have enough
affordable units or money to meet the needs. Today local housing advocates say
around half of Rochester-area tenants spend more than 30 percent of their
income on rent. The problem cuts across urban-suburban lines. Yet in face of
this need, vast resources go instead into McMansions beyond the horizon. And
underneath is the dynamic few people dare to discuss: the political face-off
between urbs and burbs, with the question of race and class paramount. (The
dynamic partly explains our desultory moves on the urban lead-paint crisis.)
Suffer through the TV ads, or even
scan the campaign websites of the “major” gubernatorial candidates —
incumbent George Pataki and challengers Carl McCall and Andrew Cuomo — and
you’ll see that affordable housing and homelessness aren’t at the top of the
New York agenda. Cuomo, a former federal Housing and Urban Development
secretary, gives the most attention and detail to the issue. But the fact is,
New Yorkers are too busy tossing nostrums around to address the issue.
• Schools. I’m too depressed to say
a lot here. But if we think sustainable, we’ll have a nationally funded public
school system with local, democratic controls. No more fiefdoms of privilege
based on high housing values, or islands of poverty based on abandoned cities.
It’s been said that the public schools are about the only American institution
in which Americans must behave and must be treated roughly as equals. That’s
the type of experience that everyone needs. And defense of public schools, not
to mention educational reform, must rest on that simple truth.
• Health care. I declared myself on
this one last week. So here I’ll add only that we’re letting sustainability
slip away from us, and putting it under the knife of national policy. The fact
is, there’s very little that can be done locally on this one. A concerted
community effort failed even to save Genesee Hospital as such — though I’m
hopeful the complex will be used for some kind of care.
Health care is a right. It should be
in the Constitution. If it were, we’d have to do the right thing: see to it
that everybody gets full and equal medical care, as needed. No deductibles, you
might say.
• Economic development. Just as with
Tom Golisano-style messages about creating jobs (except paid firefighters’
jobs, which The Tom would turn to volunteer posts) and cutting taxes, I hear
too much about casinos.
I agree 150 percent with former City Newspaper writer Mark Hare that
casinos are a dead end. They’re also an insult to traditional Native American
values.
As a native Niagaran, I cringe to
think that the Temple of Ugly, the Niagara Falls Convention Center, will be
made more so by being turned into a temporary gambling den. And yes, news
reports say a second casino may be on the way for Niagara Falls, Ontario, the
crossborder city which in a better world would be a close regional partner, not
a competitor. And who knows how many other casinos will pop up, or where? Will
our home become an archipelago of one-arm bandits interspersed with Lotto
counters?
Call me old-fashioned, but I think
the basis — the foundation, not
necessarily the bulk — of a sound
economy in this region is agriculture. And that’s precisely what we’re
shortchanging. Ag is the state’s biggest industry, and we’ve got some of the
finest farmland on earth. Every cubic inch of our soil should be treated like
gold and diamonds, or actually, much better than those inert vanities.
• Transportation. I’ve said I’d
enjoy a ride on the fast ferry to Toronto; bike in hand, I might even become a
frequent boarder. But I don’t think the ferry is a sustainable thing. Other,
less expensive (and admittedly more limited) lake ferries have come and gone.
But in any case, the accent should
be on rail. Hey, we’ve got the rights-of-way, the existing tracks, the rolling
stock, everything but the political will to create 21st century rail links with
Toronto and other destinations. What absurd prejudice — witness recent
condemnations of Amtrak subsidies, so puny next to the routine private-public
payouts for roadways and motor vehicles — keeps a modern rail system off the
American political map?
Well, that’s
my Labor
Day rant.
Love or hate it. No “moderates,”
please.
Consider where we’re headed
together, you and I. It’s pretty much where we’ve been, only worse.
Dicey “gaming” palaces, breaks for
big business, high rents and “no vacancy” signs for the poor, overgrown bathtub
toys for Lake Ontario, brownfields forever… None of this sounds remotely sustainable to me. Unless you redefine
the term yet again to mean “we’re stuck with this crap.”
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2002.
