ALOOOOO-HA: A week ago yesterday few knew what or who "Preserve Kauai's Rural Character (PKRC)" was. And apparently no one knows or will say today.
Last Sunday was the day we received an innocent enough yet slick professional email- produced by marketer VerticalResponse- reviving the anti-Kilauea Amphitheater movement in the wake of news of a takeover of the Kalihiwai Ridge Community Association (KRCA) in Kilauea by proponents of the project, causing KRCA to drop it's contested case for the required Special Use Permit before the planning commission.
The mass mailing- replete with one of those "click here to unsubscribe buttons" and a personalized "Dear Andy" salutation- tried to reframe the argument from one of "stay loud already" vs the "nahting for do around hea" mantra to appeal to we professional land use rabblerousers by putting the fear of commercialization of ag land in our green little hearts.
Despite numerous requests this week the originator of these emails remains unknown but not his, her or their intentions.
It didn't take but a few hours for the now ubiquitous developer-Bill-Porter-as-Hitler video to surface, again anonymously. And it didn't take us but a few seconds to identify the style of the short film to be that of a certain local filmmaker who has done a few "who did that" videos.
Not only was the mailing slick- not to mention costly, especially complete with a mailing list- but the PR effort and the knowledge of what pushes the sustainability crowds solar-generated buttons was almost impeccable.
Almost, except that some of the so-called "facts" weren't.
So it was until mid-week when KRCA busted out the big bucks and published a full page ad in the local newspaper and another email announcing it.
The ad proclaimed that approval of a special use permit would be a first-ever for commercial use "on land zoned as 'Agricultural' by the State"- a meaningless phrase that belied the author's lack of sophistication in the ways of land use in the islands.
As we find ourselves explaining way too often the state, under direction of the Land Use Commission, does "districting" while the county does "zoning." It's an important distinction and one that has caused no dearth of legal wangling over the years.
The next move, apparently from the developer, was an email going over and attempting to refute, point by point, the contentions of the ad, although most were semantic arguments as to whether the ad's depiction of an "amusement park" was appropriate, but also attempting to debunk the ad's debunking of the "Six Myths About the Kilauea Pavilion."
And yesterday, once again, the antis were at it again with a debunking of the debunking of the debunking in point by point by point, tri-color regalia.
The real issue here is the same one that's plagued this and the surrounding parcels for generations- what to do with the "light industrial" land- a remnant of the sugar cane mill days- that sits in the middle of agriculturally and districted and zoned land just north and mauka of Kilauea. It's gone through all sorts of designations over the years, reverting back and forth, as plans either fell through or the Kilauea community rose up against the plans.
While we don't have any way of verifying the "first ever commercial use permit for ag land" claim made by KRCA we seriously doubt it although that may have more to do with Preserve Kauai's Rural Character's confusion between county zoning and state districting and what the two different "agricultural" designation actually mean. And rather than stating and quoting any specific section of HRS 205, which lists the allowable- and more importantly the not allowable- uses of ag lands, KRCA just listed a hodge-podge of provisions and a contention... the point being that unless uses are specifically banned they are generally allowed with a special use permit.
What is pretty obvious is that the handful of Kalihiwai Ridge residents- who themselves live on ag subdivisions and "condos"- that were ousted from their community association posts for their opposition to the project are trying to reframe the argument to suck in- and we might say quite successfully noting the many "re-sendings" of their emails- the land use/sustainability crowd even after a buy-in to the project by the apparent majority of both Kilauea and Kalihiwai Ridge (KR) residents.
Will it set a precedent that will forever change the way special use permits are issued for commercialization of ag lands as PKRC claims? Unlikely considering the way the developer went to the community and asked what they'd like to see on the land which is the one thing that the majority of local people require as an act of "aloha."
It doesn't help that the KR folks are seen as a bunch of rich haoles whose use of ag land as "gentleman estates" is seen as far more objectionable- not to mention destructive of agriculture by cutting up and skyrocketing the price of ag land- even by those whom they are enlisting in the fight to stop the project.
Perhaps that's why the PKRC people refuse to identify themselves and answer questions from the press and have rather tried a last ditch effort to rally the usual suspects by casting the issue as a battle for the future of agriculture on Kaua`i.
Aloha has less to do with smiling as you clean toilets for the tourists as the visitor's bureau wants people to think and more to do with respect- you don't just walk up and take the fruit on someone's lawn, you ask first. Same goes with a notoriously hard to develop parcel of land slated for development.
And no matter what Bill Porter is doing, he not only asked but actually listened.
And while we have apprehensions at the commercialization of the already commercialized area, it's the North Shore residents who will have to live with what they bought into.
Tomorrow the sh*t hits the fan at the planning commission meeting where the permit has been recommended for approval by the planning department staff and director. But, depending on what side you're on, fortunately or unfortunately, the genuine of ingenuous efforts of PKRC will likely have been in vain.
Showing posts with label Sustainability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sustainability. Show all posts
Monday, April 11, 2011
Friday, May 29, 2009
DIGGIN’ UP THE DIRT
DIGGIN’ UP THE DIRT: Public Broadcasting likes to tell us they “do what the commercial networks won’t”. And in Hawai`i they do, on the surface, with regularly scheduled local “public affairs” programming three nights a week where the local broadcast networks average about, well zero.
It’s questionable how topically relevant two of those programs are, like the local sports talk of “Leahey and Leahey” and Leslie Wilcox’s amazing ability to turn interviews with the most politically fascinating individuals in the state into fluff pieces in her “Long Story Short”.
But Dan Boylan’s “Island Insights” usually cooks up at least a promise of a wide ranging, panel discussion of the burning issue of the day.
That promise would be fulfilled if the panel actually pitted those who took diametrically opposed positions. But instead all too often the producer rounds up the usual suspects who represent the state’s corporate controlled oligarchy.
Never was that more so than last light’s installment on the “future of agriculture in Hawai`i”.
Promos promised discussion of “sustainability” and land issues and the political will to make diversified agriculture more than the empty campaign promise of aspiring pols.
But instead three of the four represented large corporate industrial money-driven farms and the fourth, Aussie transplant Gary Maunakea-Fort from the Big Island, an inarticulate organic farmer and opponent of what he called “industrial farms” who serves high end restaurants on Kona side with arugula on 4 acres there, although he is trying to expand to 16 acres.
The three corporate farmers included Adolph Helm of Moloka`i who represented the “Hawai`i Crop Improvement Association” and heads up the GMO-corn seed operation there, the Chair of the Hawai`i Board of Agriculture Sandra Lee Kunimoto and Richard Ha whose 600 acres Hamakua Farms plants 600 chemically-fertilized acres of whatever makes him the most money.
The sustainably discussion was a joke. Apparently none had any idea of what the movement toward sustainability was all about.
Ha was straightforward in re-defining sustainability as being economically based repeatedly saying whatever makes money is what is sustainable. Worse was Helm who not just agreed with Ha’s economic model but who claimed that “everyone has a different idea of what sustainability means” and went on to say how GMO corn seed is our best hope for sustaining agriculture”
Kunimoto seemed equally as clueless claiming that “best management practices” are the key.
The GMO discussion was equally obtuse with the three industrial farmers providing the tired old lies of “strict government oversight” and “higher yields” along with the “fully tested” and “strictly regulated”. The only real discussion was about how to deal with the “cultural” objections to GMO taro with the understanding among themselves that science” was on their side.
The fact that GMO products have never been fully tested and that science has been thrown under the bus with the precautionary principle—the main guiding standard in real science- getting the shortest of shrifts. Products are assumed safe with little scrutiny and voluntary compliance and self regulation providing for non-compliance- as violations and resulting fines across the county have shown- being the norm under the “deregulation” regimes of the last few decades.
When a viewer asked about labeling issue all they could do is repeat the “strict government regulation means it’s as safe an any other product” dodge.
Forth was not even asked to answer the question.
But if discussion on those two subjects were dismally one-sided the one on land use was doubly perverse.
The cost of land was never mentioned as a deterrent to farming even though any young aspiring farmer will tell you that that’s impediment number one. Even when the pressure to develop ag land came up the fact that, in order to farm one must invest more in land than one could ever possibly recover in order to start, never came up.
As a matter of fact they lauded the new “identification of important ag lands” study as the key to the future of agriculture, although none ventured a guess as to how reclassifying tons of ag land as urban and residential would help drive down ag land prices.
In an age when we are increasingly looking for ways to “grow” energy with solar wind and biomass “farming” to call any ag land at all “unimportant” is absolute insanity. Identifying land for development just squeezes that energy production onto more arable land, driving prices up not just for the land but the resulting food and energy even further.
That’s because every successful farmer in Hawai`i, for one reason or another, whether through inheritance subsidized lease or through some other circumstance, has not had to factor in land cost into the viability of their farm.
While some mentioned county regulation none recognized the state’s role in allowing “ag condominiums” over which the counties have zero control. That is what has driven prices sky high as ag land becomes “gentleman farms”.
None, including Forth, talked of sustainable small family farms. So of course the problems of hiring “agricultural workers” was the answer when Boylan asked why “young people don’t want to farm”.
That seems to be the mantra of corporate farmers almost all of whom started being land ag rich so never had to factor that cost into their profit equation. They simply seek to hire people to do the seasonal work at low wages rather than taking in partners or forming co-ops.
The fact is that there are hoards of young people who would love to become farmers- Forth says he hires them “for a few years” just so they can have the experience and had 75 applicants for 24 positions last year. But the cost of land is prohibitive because no crop and no amount of work can produce enough to sustain those who do the work and also pay off the exorbitant cost of obtaining land with prices that have been driven by making ag land in small de facto residential lots for rich mainland folks
The real solution to sustainable ag is multi pronged but not very complicated. It starts with bring down the cost by restricting use. Counties can easily remove density from ag land and open land and the state can just as easily eliminate agricultural condominiums making land useless for anything but agriculture.
The more of that “strictly ag use” land there is the lower the price will be. Every rezoning and ag subdivision drives prices higher still. Those need to stop entirely.
Once that is in place the business plan of the young farmer becomes easy to construct and one that, with hard work and knowledge, would make a career in farming a possibility.
The corporate model relies on “workers” and “jobs” that nobody wants- do you want to work for minimum wage (or less as farm workers may be paid)?
The fact that no one wants to do hard work for peanuts doesn’t mean young people don’t want to farm or do hard work at all. They just don’t want to farm for low wages for someone who somehow acquired land at a way-below-market-cost that they didn’t have to factor into their business plan.
The problem is that lip service to ag is all we get from short sighted pols who still think of sustainability in terms of an economically-driven industrial model of operation.
With people like Kunimoto overseeing and cheerleading factory farmers like Ha and “GMO is our future” Monsanto henchmen like Helm no one is holding their breath that our elected officials will remove the corporate yoke from farming by reforming our land use polices.
But we may never even get that far. When the “unimportant ag lands” study is done and most of the ag land is developed there may not be anything to reform.
It’s questionable how topically relevant two of those programs are, like the local sports talk of “Leahey and Leahey” and Leslie Wilcox’s amazing ability to turn interviews with the most politically fascinating individuals in the state into fluff pieces in her “Long Story Short”.
But Dan Boylan’s “Island Insights” usually cooks up at least a promise of a wide ranging, panel discussion of the burning issue of the day.
That promise would be fulfilled if the panel actually pitted those who took diametrically opposed positions. But instead all too often the producer rounds up the usual suspects who represent the state’s corporate controlled oligarchy.
Never was that more so than last light’s installment on the “future of agriculture in Hawai`i”.
Promos promised discussion of “sustainability” and land issues and the political will to make diversified agriculture more than the empty campaign promise of aspiring pols.
But instead three of the four represented large corporate industrial money-driven farms and the fourth, Aussie transplant Gary Maunakea-Fort from the Big Island, an inarticulate organic farmer and opponent of what he called “industrial farms” who serves high end restaurants on Kona side with arugula on 4 acres there, although he is trying to expand to 16 acres.
The three corporate farmers included Adolph Helm of Moloka`i who represented the “Hawai`i Crop Improvement Association” and heads up the GMO-corn seed operation there, the Chair of the Hawai`i Board of Agriculture Sandra Lee Kunimoto and Richard Ha whose 600 acres Hamakua Farms plants 600 chemically-fertilized acres of whatever makes him the most money.
The sustainably discussion was a joke. Apparently none had any idea of what the movement toward sustainability was all about.
Ha was straightforward in re-defining sustainability as being economically based repeatedly saying whatever makes money is what is sustainable. Worse was Helm who not just agreed with Ha’s economic model but who claimed that “everyone has a different idea of what sustainability means” and went on to say how GMO corn seed is our best hope for sustaining agriculture”
Kunimoto seemed equally as clueless claiming that “best management practices” are the key.
The GMO discussion was equally obtuse with the three industrial farmers providing the tired old lies of “strict government oversight” and “higher yields” along with the “fully tested” and “strictly regulated”. The only real discussion was about how to deal with the “cultural” objections to GMO taro with the understanding among themselves that science” was on their side.
The fact that GMO products have never been fully tested and that science has been thrown under the bus with the precautionary principle—the main guiding standard in real science- getting the shortest of shrifts. Products are assumed safe with little scrutiny and voluntary compliance and self regulation providing for non-compliance- as violations and resulting fines across the county have shown- being the norm under the “deregulation” regimes of the last few decades.
When a viewer asked about labeling issue all they could do is repeat the “strict government regulation means it’s as safe an any other product” dodge.
Forth was not even asked to answer the question.
But if discussion on those two subjects were dismally one-sided the one on land use was doubly perverse.
The cost of land was never mentioned as a deterrent to farming even though any young aspiring farmer will tell you that that’s impediment number one. Even when the pressure to develop ag land came up the fact that, in order to farm one must invest more in land than one could ever possibly recover in order to start, never came up.
As a matter of fact they lauded the new “identification of important ag lands” study as the key to the future of agriculture, although none ventured a guess as to how reclassifying tons of ag land as urban and residential would help drive down ag land prices.
In an age when we are increasingly looking for ways to “grow” energy with solar wind and biomass “farming” to call any ag land at all “unimportant” is absolute insanity. Identifying land for development just squeezes that energy production onto more arable land, driving prices up not just for the land but the resulting food and energy even further.
That’s because every successful farmer in Hawai`i, for one reason or another, whether through inheritance subsidized lease or through some other circumstance, has not had to factor in land cost into the viability of their farm.
While some mentioned county regulation none recognized the state’s role in allowing “ag condominiums” over which the counties have zero control. That is what has driven prices sky high as ag land becomes “gentleman farms”.
None, including Forth, talked of sustainable small family farms. So of course the problems of hiring “agricultural workers” was the answer when Boylan asked why “young people don’t want to farm”.
That seems to be the mantra of corporate farmers almost all of whom started being land ag rich so never had to factor that cost into their profit equation. They simply seek to hire people to do the seasonal work at low wages rather than taking in partners or forming co-ops.
The fact is that there are hoards of young people who would love to become farmers- Forth says he hires them “for a few years” just so they can have the experience and had 75 applicants for 24 positions last year. But the cost of land is prohibitive because no crop and no amount of work can produce enough to sustain those who do the work and also pay off the exorbitant cost of obtaining land with prices that have been driven by making ag land in small de facto residential lots for rich mainland folks
The real solution to sustainable ag is multi pronged but not very complicated. It starts with bring down the cost by restricting use. Counties can easily remove density from ag land and open land and the state can just as easily eliminate agricultural condominiums making land useless for anything but agriculture.
The more of that “strictly ag use” land there is the lower the price will be. Every rezoning and ag subdivision drives prices higher still. Those need to stop entirely.
Once that is in place the business plan of the young farmer becomes easy to construct and one that, with hard work and knowledge, would make a career in farming a possibility.
The corporate model relies on “workers” and “jobs” that nobody wants- do you want to work for minimum wage (or less as farm workers may be paid)?
The fact that no one wants to do hard work for peanuts doesn’t mean young people don’t want to farm or do hard work at all. They just don’t want to farm for low wages for someone who somehow acquired land at a way-below-market-cost that they didn’t have to factor into their business plan.
The problem is that lip service to ag is all we get from short sighted pols who still think of sustainability in terms of an economically-driven industrial model of operation.
With people like Kunimoto overseeing and cheerleading factory farmers like Ha and “GMO is our future” Monsanto henchmen like Helm no one is holding their breath that our elected officials will remove the corporate yoke from farming by reforming our land use polices.
But we may never even get that far. When the “unimportant ag lands” study is done and most of the ag land is developed there may not be anything to reform.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
GREEN WITH ENVY
GREEN WITH ENVY: When Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, legendary satirist-songwriting Tom Lehrer said the event “made political satire obsolete” and so he gave up on trying to outdo reality.
But we persevere since in the intervening 35 years those kinds of nuggets have become so overarching that we’ve become attenuated to it and seldom even realize the bizarre nature of what we’ve just heard.
Last night we were barely paying attention to a network news piece on the pervasiveness of “green” products these days where a reporter at a trade show of these everyday consumer goods was telling us how all how corporate America is “going green”.
Suddenly everything you buy is “green”. From environmentally sound internal combustion cars to “clean coal” to Sierra Club endorsed Clorox every manufacturer with a product to push has jumped on the “sustainability” bandwagon.
And how did they do that- why by advertising their new found concern for “mother earth” and “the children”.
That same toxic product we former eschewed has been miraculously transformed, not by changing the contents but by changing the perception of it.
The reporter, in a wishy washy attempt at “exposing” the “greenwashing “scam- which nowadays involves little more than a raised eyebrow and a sneering tone of voice on the part of the TV correspondent- ended the piece with a short quote from what appeared to be a “spokesperson” for the new green industry.
He apparently WAS worried about the future- the future not of the human race or the planet but of this “environmentally conscious” form of product promotion.
Was he afraid people would catch on to the lack of sustainability in producing mass-market environmentally-sensitive products with none of that messy environmental sensitivity?
No. He said the real problem for green product makers was that ”this whole sustainability thing is probably just a fad.”
And that’s how big business sees it- it’s just a “sustainability fad”- the oxymoronic phrase of the decade.
The notion of creating a planet that won’t kill us all will eventually just be a passing fancy like the hula hoop or the pet rock. Soon we’ll be back to our good old profligate ways, stuffing out faces with deep-fried candy bars and our pockets with iphones and credit cards.
A. blue tooth in every ear and 1000 channels of digital. flat-screen, remote controlled circuses in front of every eyeball.
And you know what- the spokesperson may be right because at this very moment we are teetering on the cultural and economic precipice of a see-saw and one way or the other, it’s all downhill from here.
And our bet’s on the fat guy.
It’s almost impossible to underestimate the depths of depravity of American consumerism.
Despite 30 years of consciousness raising through things like the last Friday’s “Buy Nothing Day” movement and the Reverend Billy’s boisterous bullhorn-blasted “sermons” at the Times Square Disney Store, people are still willing to stampede the Wal Mart doors and trample clerks to get a good deals on random small appliances.
When you ask the average European- or even the jihadi-on-the-street- what they really find odious about the U.S. is our worship at the altar of the shopping mall- not the products themselves but our decadent avariciousness for them.
With our economy finally returning to reality in recent months, cutting back on the purchase of crap we don’t need- and will throw away in a matter of months to get another one we don’t need- anti-consumerism in general has become a concept people are finally embracing, if not intellectually, out of necessity.
But not if our new “green” advertising executive and the sycophantic “business news” cheerleaders can help it.
Because as they become aware of people’s bent to examine our disposable culture they seem intent on convincing us to eschew this opportunity to dial it back a notch and encourage us to spend even more... all to “save the economy”.
Who hasn’t seen one of those little PR pieces disguised as economic “news you can use” espousing the cockamamie notion that the only way our economy will improve is if we go out and spend more money we don’t have- just like we did during the recent EZ credit era.
And just in case you didn’t quite get the memo, interspersed between those news pieces are ads for “0% interest until 2010 when you use your credit card” or “no payment until after the holidays” from the same credit card people who brought you this mess in the first place.
Just ignore that recent notice that your default rate was going up to 29.99%.APR.
Yes the problem in all this is not that we’ve all got more debt that we could ever hope to pay off but the fact that we aren’t quite deeply in debt enough to “get the economy rolling again”.
So buy another flat-screen TV for the bathroom and order a few more pizza’s with double-everything – the more you spend the more you’ll have when this sustainability fad is over.
But we persevere since in the intervening 35 years those kinds of nuggets have become so overarching that we’ve become attenuated to it and seldom even realize the bizarre nature of what we’ve just heard.
Last night we were barely paying attention to a network news piece on the pervasiveness of “green” products these days where a reporter at a trade show of these everyday consumer goods was telling us how all how corporate America is “going green”.
Suddenly everything you buy is “green”. From environmentally sound internal combustion cars to “clean coal” to Sierra Club endorsed Clorox every manufacturer with a product to push has jumped on the “sustainability” bandwagon.
And how did they do that- why by advertising their new found concern for “mother earth” and “the children”.
That same toxic product we former eschewed has been miraculously transformed, not by changing the contents but by changing the perception of it.
The reporter, in a wishy washy attempt at “exposing” the “greenwashing “scam- which nowadays involves little more than a raised eyebrow and a sneering tone of voice on the part of the TV correspondent- ended the piece with a short quote from what appeared to be a “spokesperson” for the new green industry.
He apparently WAS worried about the future- the future not of the human race or the planet but of this “environmentally conscious” form of product promotion.
Was he afraid people would catch on to the lack of sustainability in producing mass-market environmentally-sensitive products with none of that messy environmental sensitivity?
No. He said the real problem for green product makers was that ”this whole sustainability thing is probably just a fad.”
And that’s how big business sees it- it’s just a “sustainability fad”- the oxymoronic phrase of the decade.
The notion of creating a planet that won’t kill us all will eventually just be a passing fancy like the hula hoop or the pet rock. Soon we’ll be back to our good old profligate ways, stuffing out faces with deep-fried candy bars and our pockets with iphones and credit cards.
A. blue tooth in every ear and 1000 channels of digital. flat-screen, remote controlled circuses in front of every eyeball.
And you know what- the spokesperson may be right because at this very moment we are teetering on the cultural and economic precipice of a see-saw and one way or the other, it’s all downhill from here.
And our bet’s on the fat guy.
It’s almost impossible to underestimate the depths of depravity of American consumerism.
Despite 30 years of consciousness raising through things like the last Friday’s “Buy Nothing Day” movement and the Reverend Billy’s boisterous bullhorn-blasted “sermons” at the Times Square Disney Store, people are still willing to stampede the Wal Mart doors and trample clerks to get a good deals on random small appliances.
When you ask the average European- or even the jihadi-on-the-street- what they really find odious about the U.S. is our worship at the altar of the shopping mall- not the products themselves but our decadent avariciousness for them.
With our economy finally returning to reality in recent months, cutting back on the purchase of crap we don’t need- and will throw away in a matter of months to get another one we don’t need- anti-consumerism in general has become a concept people are finally embracing, if not intellectually, out of necessity.
But not if our new “green” advertising executive and the sycophantic “business news” cheerleaders can help it.
Because as they become aware of people’s bent to examine our disposable culture they seem intent on convincing us to eschew this opportunity to dial it back a notch and encourage us to spend even more... all to “save the economy”.
Who hasn’t seen one of those little PR pieces disguised as economic “news you can use” espousing the cockamamie notion that the only way our economy will improve is if we go out and spend more money we don’t have- just like we did during the recent EZ credit era.
And just in case you didn’t quite get the memo, interspersed between those news pieces are ads for “0% interest until 2010 when you use your credit card” or “no payment until after the holidays” from the same credit card people who brought you this mess in the first place.
Just ignore that recent notice that your default rate was going up to 29.99%.APR.
Yes the problem in all this is not that we’ve all got more debt that we could ever hope to pay off but the fact that we aren’t quite deeply in debt enough to “get the economy rolling again”.
So buy another flat-screen TV for the bathroom and order a few more pizza’s with double-everything – the more you spend the more you’ll have when this sustainability fad is over.
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