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You say the land isn't suitable for farming, yet you have been growing hay on it, and thus it could also grow food for people. Many of today's new farmers are profiting from growing on plots of land a fraction of your land's acreage.

Buying open land in a rural area as an investment for anything other than the pleasure and sustenance that land brings is investment in death. It was your unfortunate lack of insight into this that led to your woes.

There are so many healthy enterprises hungry for investment capital out there. Enterprises that focus on doing good for the planet and people. I encourage you to look for those.

posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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The problem with Gainesvillle that you are citing has to do with the government there trying to straddle two boats. They still support the dominator style economy that spurs growth and thus attracts new residents, while trying to contain it. If they were to stop spending public money on growth, and allow a land-based economy of locally owned businesses to flourish instead then they would not have this problem.

People don't overpopulate if they have to pay directly for doing so.

posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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"Cities like Cornelius and Forest Grove need more land to attract industries that create jobs. "

-- No, the people in those areas need the leaks of wealth to be plugged so that they can prosper and enjoy the beauty of the natural world without growth. 

Spending public money to attract more industry only increases the draining of wealth away from the land and the people, and further impoverishes everyone. This is not theory, this is our history!

An economy that recognizes the land as its source and that therefore protects and restores the life-giving sustenance from that land is one that provides prosperity for all. More jobs means more people and thus less wealth to go around. Better quality jobs means more wealth for everyone, more leisure, more time with family and friends, and more nature for everyone to enjoy. 

Plug the leaks by ending the subsidies to big business and developers, and locally-owned and employee-owned businesses based upon the local resources will flourish.

posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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"Realistically, nature is not putting a limit anytime soon on growth within the Portland metro area."

-- Actually, it is. Our rivers and streams are suffering from new construction.

Bull Run, which is outside of our bioregion, and therefore should not be supplying Portland's water in the first place, cannot even supply us enough water all throughout the year with our current population. Hence, the use of polluted water in late summer months from the wells dug along the Columbia. Climate change due to our increased population and consumption is going to reduce our water supply from the mountain even further.

Then there's the severe decline of plant and animal species in the area that we need for our survival. Salmon is but one example.

 "Or are people suggesting if we build it then they will have babies?"

-- yes, actually. There is already more than ample housing for the people who are already alive. We're not seeing children being born and raised in doorways and under bridges, after all! Where there is homelessness, it's due to the poverty created by growth, not lack of housing.

Artificial expansion of carrying capacity for more people, while temporary and dangerous, disconnects people from the signals from natural resources that limits have been exceeded. And so there is no immediate, personal consequence for over-multiplying. 

It is only with the advent of dominator-style economies and government that this disconnect is made possible. And in Oregon, this dominator style has the majority footing the bill for more people and more consumption growth, with the fiscal benefits going mostly to only a very slim minority of already-wealthy (and dominant) individuals. If growth is not subsidized by the public, it simply cannot happen.

As I mentioned above, it is the lack of public funds now that is stalling the construction of new roads, houses, and infrastructure in areas where the UGB has already been expanded, and it is this lack of funds that has the developers and big-business interests scrambling to get us to fork out more for them. 

After Washington County commissioners, who are all in the pockets of big business and developers, get their UGB expansions, their next step will be to figure out how to get more public money to pay for them. This, in a time when funding for education and other basic services is being severely cut back!

posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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Please see comments above -- The only reason our population will grow is because of billions of dollars in public subsidies.

The land that has not already been occupied or degraded is needed for our survival -- you know, food, water purification, habitat for plant and animal species that we depend upon to provide for all else that keeps us alive.

So you're saying we should be spending more billions on making sure that growth happens. Aren't we having shortages of funding for basic services and schools? Why are the billions in subsidies to growth sacrosanct, but not providing for the indigent, the sick, and children?

posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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• Representative of big businesses and the new construction industry's biggest fear is that our population WON'T grow, and that's why they're scrambling so hard to get us to pay for it. Why after the UGB expansion into Damascus years ago hasn't anything been built there yet, and why else are Metro's Michael Jordan and others pushing for $10-30 billion in subsidies so that it can happen? 

• Growth doesn't improve the economy, but only worsens it. The growth we have suffered from is the cause of our economic collapse, not a coincidence. Growth happens as the result of the draining away of wealth from the Earth and its people and into the hands of an ever-shrinking minority. As wealth grows more scarce, more people and more consumption are required to keep us all from falling into total poverty. But since all wealth comes from local natural resources, as we deplete these to keep priming the pump, eventually our wealth will dry up to the point where we will not be able to survive.

• When the swine flu virus was becoming an epidemic, did we just lay back and wait for it to come? Of course not! So why, when we know that growth is the world's worst killer disease, do we just lay back and accept it as inevitable? Shouldn't we be doing everything in our power to stop this epidemic before it wipes out all that we need to survive? Where's our environmental and social justice ethic?

• End the growth subsidies, end the subsidies to global trade, level the playing field for locally-owned, employee-owned businesses to thrive, and growth will come to a screeching halt. We will restore our local natural capital, we will restore our forests, wildland habitats, and farmland, and we will all prosper equitably. No need to grow either up or out. That simple. That smart.

posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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It really is amazing how foggy we can all get when it comes to continual local overpopulation and overconsumption. So let's get some basic facts out of the way:

• In an already overpopulated and overconsumed bioregion, such as is the Columbia-Willamette Watershed, where we live, there is no such thing as "smart" growth. All growth is dumb, dumb as can be. No matter how we may try to slice it, it is not possible for any person to have no negative impact on the environment. Thus, more people always means more conversion of Earth energy and matter into waste sinks, more stress on and destruction of local habitats and species, increased pressure to grow both UP and OUT, and increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

• So long as our population continues to grow, we will continue to grow both UP and OUT, as we have been doing for the past 25 years, despite the vast majority of residents stating in poll after poll that they don't want either. Growing both up and out also worsens livability for inner city, suburb, rural areas, and wilderness, with absolutely nothing that "mitigation" can do to reverse it.

• It is not inevitable that one million more people will live in the area than now, any more than it was inevitable that the area's population has grown in the past twenty-five years. Our population has grown, and will continue to grow, only as a result of direct policy and money spent to ensure that it happens. A lot of policy, and vast sums of money. Do you really expect to see one million more people sleeping in doorways, cars and under bridges in the region if we don't spend vast sums of public money on the new jobs, houses, roads and infrastructure that the increased population requires? I didn't think so! 

posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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Mr. Vice-President, economic growth is dependent upon the continual growth of human population and consumption, which is of course non-sustainable. How, then, is it possible for economic growth to be sustainable, as you suggest?

Shouldn't we instead be transitioning to an economic system that is based upon our human populations and consumption stabilized within the carrying capacities of our bioregions, and which levels the playing field for small local businesses and their employees to prosper?

posted 2 years, 7 months ago
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(Although my comment is well under 2500 characters, including spaces, this site won't accept it except for broken into three parts. This is the first.)

Some gross false assumptions are being made in this whole discussion:

1) It is necessary and inevitable that the demand for timber will increase.

2) It is necessary to fill that increased demand.

-- The demand for timber and wood products, along with the demand for all products, needs to decrease, as does our fulfillment of that demand. This is the only way we are going to stop global warming and prevent total ecosystemic collapse, and it is the only way for us to at last arrive at a healthy economy for all. The environment is the sole source of all economy. The more and better environment we have, the better will be our economy.

posted 2 years, 10 months ago
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3) Houses need to be made out of wood.

-- In most other countries, particularly Europe, houses are not made out of wood, but of Earth materials, which are more stable and last longer. To Europeans, it is totally shocking that we make our houses out of wood. Wood should only be used in small quantities where it will be enjoyed as decoration.

4) New houses need to be built because the continual increase of new houses built on open land or in urban infill is a healthy and necessary factor of the economy.

-- The Earth already has too many houses on it. Building more of them anywhere is bad for it and us all, whether via continual sprawl or continual urban infill without a corresponding equal opening of greenspace acre per-person. It damages both livability and the ability of the Earth to replenish itself. 

posted 2 years, 10 months ago
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5) People who have been dependent on the cutting down of trees and forests should be able to continue on with this dependency.

-- The cutting down of trees and forests is not sustainable. If people are living in places where the only means of earning income is via this, then they need to vacate those places and find employment or start businesses in industries that are sustainable. Also, they may need to consider family planning in order to live within their and the planet's means. No government should be in the business of propping up unsustainable activity.

6) Forests need to be thinned because forest fires need to be prevented.

-- Forest fires are healthy and necessary for the forests' health. Our forests have gotten too dense because of decades of fire suppression.

7) Forests need to be "managed."

-- The world's forests have done just fine on their own for millions of years. There is nothing that has changed in forest ecology in the last 150 years that requires humans to "manage" them. It is possible for a small overall population to alter some small areas of forest land for aesthetic and foraging desires, but that is wholly different from "managing" an entire bioregion's forests.

Our economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. 

posted 2 years, 10 months ago
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