I don’t have time to prepare a typical ‘think piece,’ so as a placeholder I’m putting out a few quotations that have captured my attention, together with comments and a description of the piece I will post before the end of May. The quotations come from Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry, two writers I have admired for many years. I’ll close by calling attention to the round-the-world activities planned for May 5.

Gary Snyder is a poet with a unique and influential voice; he’s also an activist, a sage figure in American Buddhism and environmentalism, and a fine essayist. In the latest issue of the journal Inquiring Mind, I came across an interview with Gary Snyder conducted by the editors, Barbara Gates and Wes Nisker.

When asked, “What are the issues that are most important to you right now?” he replied, “Aside from my long-term concern for biodiversity, I find myself wrestling with the linked issues of energy and population.” He observes, “Renewable energy would only be adequate if we had ten percent of the world’s present population,” and adds that trying to imagine how that reduction might come about is “repugnant.”

Here’s the end of his answer to the question about the issues most on his mind: “I also don’t think we will see a great change until there is more of a sense of crisis than exists now, more of a collapse of the current system. The best we can do is live our lives as a model for what’s to come, making good arguments for voluntary simplicity and a sustainable society.”

I have read a lot of Wendell Berry – novels, shorter fiction, and poetry – and I seize avidly on anything new.  Two things came to my attention in a single day recently: a fine story in the latest issue of Orion, and his contribution, delivered recently in Washington, D. C., to the distinguished series of Jefferson Lectures in the Humanities, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Berry’s lecture is titled ‘It All Turns On Affection,’ and you’ll find the full text on the NEH website, accompanied by a long interview with Mr. Berry at his home in Kentucky. I can’t do justice to the full scope of the lecture; I’ll quote just two paragraphs, which develop, in a different key, themes similar to Gary Snyder’s.

“The losses and damages characteristic of our present economy cannot be stopped, let alone restored, by ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ tweakings of corporate industrialism, against which the ancient imperatives of good care, homemaking, and frugality can have no standing. The possibility of authentic correction comes, I think, from two already-evident causes. The first is scarcity and other serious problems arising from industrial abuses of the land-community. The goods of nature so far have been taken for granted and, especially in America, assumed to be limitless, but their diminishment, sooner or later unignorable, will enforce change.

“A positive cause, still little noticed by high officials and the media, is the by now well-established effort to build or rebuild local economies, starting with economies of food. This effort to connect cities with their surrounding rural landscapes has the advantage of being both attractive and necessary. It rests exactly upon the recognition of human limits and the necessity of human scale. Its purpose, to the extent possible, is to bring producers and consumers, causes and effects, back within the bounds of neighborhood, which is to say the effective reach of imagination, sympathy, affection, and all else that neighborhood implies. An economy genuinely local and neighborly offers to localities a measure of security that they cannot derive from a national or a global economy controlled by people who, by principle, have no local commitment.”

There is a tragic disjunction, noticed by both Snyder and Berry, between what is necessary on the national and global level, but impossible for political reasons, and the smaller-scale efforts that are incrementally changing households and communities, building or rebuilding the integrity of neighborhoods, locales, and even broader regions.

How do you respond to this disjunction? On the federal level in our beloved and bedeviled country, can anything be done to work around the entrenched power of those who reap enormous benefits from continuing business as usual?

Among the Sustainable Bainbridge board members and in the several programs and activist organizations allied with us, the focus of our energy has been local: working “within the bounds of neighborhood,” as Wendell Berry says, and trying to “live our lives as a model for what’s to come,” in Gary Snyder’s words.

I’ve been thinking lately that the local focus, while it’s at the heart of our mission and the sustainability agenda, needs to be framed, explicitly, within a larger context. Many people are anxious now about our future, not only on Bainbridge Island and in the Puget Sound region, but on the national and global level.

The next piece I plan to write will be a review of Mark Hertsgaard’s book, published last year: Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. Hertsgaard provides an engaging account of what has been done, and is being done, in our region and around the world, to begin adapting to the drastic changes that are already in store for us.

I’ll close with a brief mention of things that will be happening a few days from now, locally and all over the globe, to increase awareness of the effects of climate change and extreme weather. “Climate Impacts Day” is May 5^th, and plans have been made to link together isolated events in a huge pattern – to “connect the dots.” For more information, go to climatedots.org or 350.org.

“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.” (Prov. 6:6)

“Kin and Kind,” an article by Jonah Lehrer in The New Yorker for March 5, set me thinking about the contest in our culture between selfishness and generosity.  Mr. Lehrer explains recent contributions by mathematicians and biologists to our understanding of altruism, and his essay prompted me to seek out more information about the contested scientific discipline of sociobiology.

It is well known that according to Darwin, evolution favors selfish and assertive individuals.  In order to thrive and evolve, a species needs to maintain control over its territory and any competing organisms, and selfish individuals are more successful in the struggle to survive and propagate their kind.  Within a species, genetically determined traits that increase competitiveness and adaptation will prevail in successive generations and the carriers of inferior genes will die out.

We also know that in human societies and in many other species, selfish and aggressive behavior coexists in some kind of balance with nurturing and generous behavior.  How did altruism (selflessness and self-sacrifice for the sake of others) emerge in the struggle for existence and become encoded genetically?  In the history of the human race, how did altruism find a place in most of the world’s cultures?

The field of sociobiology, founded by Edward O. Wilson in the 1970’s, has sought answers to these questions and others pertaining to evolutionary processes.  Through Jonah Lehrer’s article, and through a more technical journal article, I was introduced to recent developments in sociobiology, and given a foundation for some thoughts about adaptations that will be advantageous, if and when we shift from unsustainable to truly sustainable ways of life on planet Earth.

[Note: the technical article, by David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson, is “Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology,” in the Quarterly Review of Biology, 82 (2007): 327-48; it’s available online.]

My thoughts here pertain to our long-term prospects, but I also envision some application to the way we live now, in a time when aggressive competition and self-interest are pushing generosity and cooperation to the margins of our politics.

To most readers of this post, it will be obvious that egotism, aggressive exploitation of advantages, and winner-take-all competition may be successful strategies for individuals and their descendants, but they create huge problems for society.  If practiced on a massive scale, as we see here in the U. S. and in other nations that have followed our example, such behavior is not sustainable.  We see proof of this bitter truth all around us.

Will we have to wait for more obvious collapses in our economy and the natural resources it depends upon before we stand up and face the music?  Or are there steps to be taken now that will enable us to adapt, survive, and even prosper?  If exploitation and selfishness are not sustainable, what human traits can bring such behavior under control and direct it toward living within reasonable limits?

[Note: Of the many recent books that examine the unsustainable trends in our world and its culture, two of the best are Mark Hertsgaard, Hot: Living through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, and Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth; Adapting to Our New Economic Reality.  I plan to review both books in the near future.]

By studying ants and other social insects, E. O. Wilson and his fellow sociobiologists have sought to understand how both selfish and selfless traits have evolved and been preserved, over thousands of years, in many species.  Both E. O. Wilson and D. S. Wilson (no relation) have extended their scientific inquiry to include human nature and the evolution of culture.  (Culture, of course, is not genetically transmitted, but it has much to do with which groups and nations prosper while others lose ground.)

In their application of lessons from sociobiology to the study of human nature and society, Wilson and Wilson are elaborating on a statement by Charles Darwin: “It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over other men of the same tribe, . . . an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another” (Descent of Man, quoted in “Rethinking,” 327-28).

The authors of “Rethinking” show how evolution works on more than one level.  At the level of individuals in a species, altruism is not rewarded, but they argue that selection by survival of the fittest also operates at the level of groups, where altruism, along with other forms of unselfish behavior, is apt to give the group advantages over a disorganized band of individuals out for themselves.

It seems to me that neither Darwin nor his followers in our day have paid enough heed to the advantages sometimes enjoyed by an organized band of individuals out for themselves.  It’s on this account that wars are fought and all those classic Western movies got made.  The influence of ‘the better angels of our nature’ is all too easily deflected, which is why we need the rule of law and governmental institutions.

I am more interested, however, in the vitality and positive influence of volunteerism, acting for the good of the public, often quite apart from the machinery of government.  Can we evolve to become less individualistic, more creative in our cooperation with others, toward goals that may require some selfless sacrifice and the loss of familiar comforts and conveniences?

A trend toward altruistic activism is apparent in our culture, locally and nationally.  It’s far from being the dominant trend, yet it has encountered all sorts of fierce resistance, often framed as a patriotic defense of freedom and individual rights.  Take just one instance: the furor that has developed around the ‘individual mandate’ in the Affordable Care Act.  A large percentage of individuals with adequate health care coverage believe, mistakenly, that ‘Obamacare’ will force them out of their current arrangements and into a government-sponsored plan.

In Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd show how a ‘cultural mutation’ can modify a group’s behavior in such a way that natural selection fundamentally transforms the group.  In their paper, Wilson and Wilson cite Richerson and Boyd to support their claim that “If a new behavior arises by a cultural mutation, it can quickly become the most common behavior within the group and provide the decisive edge in between-group competition” (“Rethinking,” 343).

In both nature (in the global systems that shape our climate and weather, for example) and in culture (in our creation and consumption of energy for heat, light, and transportation, for example), there seem to be ‘tipping points.’  Somehow, we need to align changes in our culture with the constraints being imposed by accumulating changes in our natural environment.

Architecture is a social art. It becomes an instrument of human fate, because it … shapes and conditions our responses…. It modifies and often breaks earlier established habit. (Richard Neutra, 1958)

On February 9^th, the proponents of the Grow Community development finally had their chance to present the project to the Planning Commission, and a three-hour meeting was devoted to the formal presentation, Q & A with Commission members, and public comment.

It was a lively evening, with none of the droning explanation and passive listening that sometimes settles over the Council chambers for long intervals.  There was a good audience for the proceedings.  I was present with other citizens who had contributed to the project’s ‘Sustainability Action Plan,’ a book-length document that provides the rationale for a somewhat utopian community.

Several aspects of the project were given a good going-over by members of the Planning Commission and concerned citizens.  Impacts on traffic, characteristics of the faces that the buildings on Wyatt will turn toward Wyatt Ave., plans for handling surface water, and the adequacy of pathways through the open spaces between Wyatt Ave. on the north and Madison Ave. on the east were all discussed. And the need for adequate parking came up, of course: more on that later.

These were all legitimate concerns, touching on problems of first importance to the architect and other contributors to the project.  From the beginning, it has been crucial to provide for dynamic relationships of the residents and the built environment of the new community with its near neighbors and the Island as a whole.

Several people expressed a hope that as this innovative project takes shape, with the developer assuming responsibility for its boundaries, the City and various citizen groups will coordinate efforts to improve the infrastructure of roads, trails, and sidewalks beyond those boundaries.

Just maybe, we can break free of a tendency toward reactive, piecemeal, and contentious responses to our problems and opportunities, and commit to projects that fit into long-range plans.  We could, simultaneously, increase vitality in neighborhoods and provide attractive connections of each place with others.

When I had an opportunity to comment, I started with the quotation from the architect Richard Neutra that appears at the beginning of this post.  “Architecture is a social art.”  The Grow Community project is a bold instance of architecture as a social art.  Many people – both professionals and amateurs – have contributed to the project, and many more will be involved in its unfolding.

When it is imaginative and original, architecure “becomes an instrument of human fate.”  Richard Neutra’s thoughts about the architect’s social role, shaping behavior and breaking established habits, emerged against the backdrop of 20^th-century modernism in the International Style.

The two decades after the end of WW II were an epochal time for architecture in the United States, and for the planning and building of cities and suburbs, with all the infrastructure needed to provide people and commerce with a mobility to match the era’s prosperity and its newfound need for convenience, efficiency, and freedom.  Real progress in the quality of life for the great majority of Americans was achieved in those decades, but in recent years it has become clear that some Faustian bargains were made.

Now the devil’s at the door.  Cheap energy and the other non-renewable resources that made the American dream possible aren’t so cheap any more, and efforts to keep fossil fuels cheap are wrecking our environment.  Land isn’t cheap either, except in places where cities, towns, and suburbs are blighted and jobs are scarce.

Mobility is still important, but sometimes it’s problematic.  People love to travel, but long commutes by car are less and less feasible.  We’re getting more aware of mpg ratios, more interested in carpooling and the availability (or not) of public transportation.  Those who are fit and brave enough to commute by bike or scooter are envied; likewise, those who can walk to work or work at home.

Which is more important: high speed internet access, or hassle-free driving, anywhere, any time?  I think our culture is already redefining mobility, and reexamining the priorities that shape how we spend our time, how much stuff we need to own, what big-ticket purchases our incomes must support, and what we can do without.

Concern for the environmental impacts of an acquisitive lifestyle isn’t the only factor that’s driving these cultural changes, nor is the current economic downturn and the dim prospects for a return to go-go growth.  Thoughtful people are considering in fresh ways what choices and activities make them happy, and what circumstances really contribute to their security.

These changes, and others related to them, are already shaping our future, regionally and right here on Bainbridge.  Which brings me back to the Grow Community, and to the proposition that the architects who build a community can modify and even break established habits.

Marja Preston acknowledged that the prices for units in the new neighborhood are not “affordable” by conventional measures, but she pointed out that if the community’s emphasis on teamwork, common property, and cost-sharing means that you won’t need a car of your own, or a washer and dryer, and if much of your food comes from community gardens, then the total cost of living there won’t be so high after all.

Members of the Planning Commission asked the designers to find room for more parking spaces before the project is fully built out.  I seriously doubt that they will be needed.  We don’t know what the future will hold, so things have to be done step by step, adapting positively to contingencies and possibilities.  I hope this process won’t be hindered by outdated assumptions.

A few days ago, my wife and I took part in a four-hour workshop, in connection with the emerging plans for the Grow Community development.  All told, approximately forty people were involved in the afternoon’s brainstorming sessions.  Some were staff members and consultants associated with Asani LLC, the design firm responsible for the project; others (myself included) were interested citizens who had contributed to the development of a detailed Sustainability Action Plan for the project; still others were intrigued by the Grow Community plans and wanted to get involved.

Marja Preston, leader of the Asani team, said that when it is fully built out, the community will include roughly 50 units for sale and 80 rental units, varying in size and capacity in both categories.  On eight acres, with a significant amount of the acreage dedicated to gardens, pathways, open spaces, community buildings, and space for parking, the residents will be living close together.

Residents will not, however, come together haphazardly, to live on their own in a high-density development as individuals, couples, or families.  Under the auspices of One Planet Living and BioRegional (a non-profit dedicated to ‘solutions for sustainability’), the project asks to be understood as an ‘intentional’ (or, if you will, ‘aspirational’) community, making a truly radical commitment to sustainable living.

From the beginning of the project, a great deal of imagination and discussion has been devoted to the development of explicit design principles, principles of sustainability, and communitarian social principles.  Thursday’s workshop was devoted to furthering, not completing, that process.

We talked about individual rights and the value of privacy, peace, and quiet; we talked about sharing space, tools, and expertise.  We didn’t itemize a bill of rights and articulate a social contract or a set of by-laws, but these needs were recognized: as understandings to be negotiated, not as a ready-made charter.  We discussed how to draw out, and include in decision-making, people who tend to shy away from jostling groups of problem-solvers.

We talked about indoor and outdoor meeting places, large and small; we imagined the difficulties and opportunities that biologically unrelated members of several generations will encounter.  We planned for sharing kayaks, bikes, and cars; we envisioned sheds for shared tools, shelves for shared books; we discussed how to equip and use a community kitchen.  Sketches of fences, gateways, a garden and a lofty community center took shape.

Boundaries of several kinds – physical, metaphorical, mental and spiritual – were recognized as necessary, questionable, and negotiable.  Relationships of the Grow Community to surrounding neighbors and the Island in general are meant to be dynamic, promoting movement in and through and around the neighborhood.

I am keenly interested in the One Planet Community agenda, and I believe that the Grow Community represents a bright new model for infill development, adaptable elsewhere if it succeeds here.  The new neighborhood offers an attractive place for older couples like myself and my wife to ‘age in place.’  More important, I expect that it will appeal to younger individuals and couples – a vital portion of our population that has been declining for decades.

Like any development on Bainbridge that’s new and ambitious, this one is bound to attract misunderstanding and criticism.  I expect that as questions and objections are heard and answered, appreciation for the Grow Community’s ambitious agenda will grow.

The Planning Commission is due to begin its review of the Grow Community development on Thursday, February 9; the meeting will begin at 7 p. m.  Whether you are intrigued or troubled by the prospect of a boldly innovative addition to the population of Winslow, I would urge you to follow the Planning Commission’s review of this project.

“You Americans, you’ve mastered the art of living with the unacceptable.”

– Breyten Breytenbach, quoted by Terry Tempest Williams

This post tracks a topic somewhat remote from our lives here on Bainbridge, but I believe that if we care only about local issues we’ll never make real progress toward the goals of sustainability.

The current issue of Orion (on sale at Eagle Harbor Books, and accessible at orionmagazine.org) begins the magazine’s thirtieth year of publication, and if you’re not already acquainted with Orion’s elegant and often unsettling considerations of nature, culture, and place, this issue is an excellent introduction.

After the photograph on the cover of a polar bear under water (by the world-class local photographer Art Wolfe), the first thing that caught my eye in the January / February issue was a long conversation between the writer Terry Tempest Williams and an activist, Tim DeChristopher.

It’s a deep, relaxed conversation; by the time I finished it I wasn’t relaxed at all, but deeply disturbed.

Mr. DeChristopher, as I dimly recalled, is the young man who disrupted a Bureau of Land Management auction of leases for rights to extract oil and gas from thousands of acres of public lands in Utah.  That was back in December of 2008, in the last lame duck days of the Bush administration.

The auction was held in a hurry, disregarding a law that required the BLM to weigh environmental impacts, on the land and on the global climate, of the resource development that would presumably flow from these leases.  Questions about the auction’s legality and its consequences attracted a number of protesters, who massed outside the building.

Tim DeChristopher was admitted to the auction and seated as bidder #70.  (Google “bidder 70 film” and you’ll find the trailer for a documentary that captures the occasion and its significance.)  At first, he only sought to drive up the prices of some leases, which typically offered very sweet deals to corporate oil and gas interests.  In the course of the day he became bolder, and made commitments to purchase several leases in order to prevent development.  The auction ended prematurely; eventually, most of the sales were invalidated.

Subsequently, Mr. DeChristopher was charged with two felony counts and found guilty in a jury trial; on July 26, 2011, he was sentenced to two years in federal prison and a $10,000 fine.  The severity of his sentence reflects not so much the seriousness of his crime, but his attitude in the course of the protracted judicial proceedings, maintaining his dignity and resisting the government’s portrayal of him as a threat to civil order and the rule of law.  Although his conviction is being appealed, he is in jail today – currently in a federal prison in Herlong, California.

Tim DeChristopher’s conversation with Terry Tempest Williams took place on May 28, 2011.  In it he anticipates prison time, and does so without fear for his loss of freedom and security.  Ms. Williams observes that he “has been in limbo for the last two years,” utterly uncertain about his future.  He replies, “I think part of what empowered me to take that leap and have that insecurity was that I already felt that insecurity. . . . My future was already lost.”

He had already been through a period of despair, having conferred with a climate scientist who said (in his words), “it’s probably too late to avoid any of the worst-case scenarios that we’re talking about.”  In response, he says, “I really felt like I was grieving my own future, and grieving the futures of everyone I care about.”  Adding to what Tim has said about despair and grieving, Terry says, “If you can go into that darkest place, you can emerge with a sense of empathy and empowerment.”

Tim accounts for his ability to move through despair and grief into activism – refusing to accept things as they are in our society – by describing his experience of freedom in the wilderness: in West Virginia, Arizona, the Ozarks, and eventually in Utah.  Returning from the Utah wilderness and going back to school, then attending the BLM auction, “watching parcels go for eight or ten dollars an acre, . . . I had this overwhelming sense that this is not acceptable.”

Loss, and fear of loss, are pervasive facts of life.  We can be ground down by losses, discouraged by fear of an uncertain future.  Or, in a crisis, we can rise up, as Tim DeChristopher did.  (A group of his friends maintain a website, peacefuluprising.org: visit it if you want to follow the ramifications of this story.)

Experience taught Tim DeChristopher that some losses are tolerable, and even to be welcomed. “I thought I was sacrificing my freedom, but instead I was grabbing onto my freedom and refusing to let go of it for the first time, you know?”

Just as Thoreau once invited Emerson to join him in jail for civil disobedience, Tim has encouraged others to follow his example, while recognizing that they may be more encumbered by responsibilities than he is as a single man of 29.  The point is to follow your conscience to your own form of freedom.

The interview in Orion was only the beginning of my learning curve, and you may be motivated, as I was, to go further.  Tim DeChristopher is not only passionate and brave; his experience has made him an eloquent leader.  (Yes! Magazine includes him in the “breakthrough 15” celebrated in the December 2011 issue, and you’ll find more about him on the yesmagazine website.)  After his sentencing on July 26, 2011, commondreams.org published (as “I Do Not Want Mercy . . .”) the long statement that he addressed to the court and the judge: it stands up well beside Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

And on August 30, grist.org published a letter from him, explaining why he didn’t accept the plea bargain that would have reduced his sentence to 30 days in jail.  Here’s a piece of it: “Sometimes it seems that the government has learned more from our social movement history than we as activists have. Their willingness to let a direct action off with a slap on the wrist while handing out two years for political statements comes from their understanding of the power of an individual.”

Words can make a difference, but only if they are allied with action – the more the merrier.

My contributions to this website were sporadic last year, and attracted little attention.  I am committed to writing more in the year ahead, and I want to attract more readers and other writers to the site, as respondents and initiators of discussion and action.

As I turn over a new leaf, my starting point is a quotation from the late Tony Judt, reflecting on the work of writers like himself: “What we are doing is bizarre. We are engaging in an intellectual exercise that will not have world-shattering consequences, and we are doing it in spite of that. Obviously this is the condition of most people who write: throwing a letter into the ocean in the forlorn hope that it will be picked up.”  Mr. Judt captures well the isolation that serious writers experience, and the longing for tenuous but meaningful connections that moves them to persist in their efforts.

Tony Judt was a prolific and well-connected writer, whose words made waves that reached readers far from his home in Manhattan.  I’m neither so gifted nor so ambitious as Judt, so I don’t dream that what I write could ever have world-shattering consequences, but I still harbor a hope that my opinions will have an impact on the thoughts and actions of others.  I’ll redouble my efforts.

I plan to respond in some blog posts to current cultural events on Bainbridge, especially those sponsored by Sustainable Bainbridge.  Occasional items will precede the events and promote participation, and others will report afterwards, for the benefit of people who were unable to attend.

Other posts will offer reflections on things I’ve read or heard.  Sometimes in my restless reading, a sentence or a paragraph catches my eye and produces a train of thought that’s pertinent to experience and issues here on Bainbridge.  Similarly, conversations with friends and encounters around town may provide an “Ah Hah!” moment.  I’ll try to capture and build upon those random occurrences.  I’ll also be writing book reviews, as I’ve done in the past, and I’ll refer curious readers to online sites for news and opinion.

I don’t plan to comment on City Council politics and the inner workings of COBI: others are better informed about those problems and personalities than I am.  I may comment on matters that come before the Design Review Board and the Planning Commission for review.  Deliberations in those meetings enable citizens to participate in the formation and implementation of land use and community development policies at the problem-solving stages.

I’ll follow this post soon with some thoughts occasioned by the current issue of Orion magazine.

With my wife out of town, I’ve enjoyed cooking for myself – when I’m not eating out.  Last night I made a savory risotto, and today, as I anticipated eating the leftover portion and finishing the bottle of wine, I thought I would write up the recipe and post it, to while away the time before election returns start coming in.

I always approach the evening on election day in a ‘rosy scenario’ mood, hoping that all my picks on the ballot will be winners.  I call this risotto ‘rosy’ on account of the color derived from the red chard.  Fix it for yourself and you’ll see what I mean.  The amounts in the recipe that follows will provide a main course for two or two meals for one person.

Ingredients:

3 to 4 cups of chicken stock (2 cups of a rich home-made stock, diluted)

olive oil (two tablespoons or more)

a medium-sized red onion, or half of a larger onion, finely chopped

most of a large bunch of red chard – leaves chopped after removing the stems, and stems finely chopped to sauté with the onions

a cup of Arborio rice

½ cup or more of a dry white wine

½ cup of walnuts, chopped into small pieces and toasted

½ cup (or less to taste) of Gorgonzola cheese or a rich blue cheese such as Pt. Reyes, chopped in bits or crumbled

salt and pepper to taste

Start by gathering together and prepping all the ingredients.  Have the chicken stock simmering on a back burner as you start to sauté the onion over medium heat.  Use a good olive oil and don’t skimp; you need enough to coat the rice when it’s added.  When the diced onion has begun to soften, add the red chard stems; sauté until they have softened and given up some color.  Add the rice and stir everything together for a minute or so, until white spots emerge in the centers of the rice grains.  Then add the wine and stir until it is absorbed.  Tweak the heat so the cooking and boiling-off of liquid is neither too fast nor too slow.  Warm your plate(s) or bowl(s) in a 200 degree oven.

Add the broth, ¾ of a cup at a time, stirring, until the rice begins to soften (about 10 minutes).  Add the chopped chard leaves, with ½ cup increments of broth; stir for a while, then lower the heat and put a lid on the sauté pan for a few minutes (altogether, another 10 minutes).

When the rice is right between firm and tender, stir in the cheese until everything is creamy, then add salt and pepper and the toasted walnut bits.  Your risotto is ready.

I’m bound to acknowledge that the term “nonconforming” arouses some people, and it worries others.  Senate bill 5451 was written in response to a politically significant concern.  In the end, the legislature didn’t deal conclusively with the issue of nonconformity: first they minimized its importance, then they left the matter up to local decision-makers.

The legislature declared, “Classifying existing structures as legally conforming will not create a risk of degrading shoreline natural resources.”  What this says, in effect, is that whatever you call an existing structure – conforming or nonconforming – has no bearing on the real world of shoreline natural resources.

Next, the legislature addressed communities developing new or amended SMPs: they are allowed to decide how to regard nonconforming structures and uses.  The bill itemizes the ways in which existing residential structures might, because of their size or location on a waterfront lot, be nonconforming, and says that local SMPs “may include provisions authorizing” them.

What, exactly, does “authorizing” mean in this context?  I’ve been saying all along that nonconforming status authorizes the indefinite continuation of structures that pre-date changes in land use regulations.

It appears that our SMP might drastically reduce, and maybe even eliminate, references to pre-existing structures and uses as nonconforming, even though they are out of line with the SMP’s requirements.  We may do this, but why should we?

What will be accomplished if the Planning Commission and the Council bow to the exaggerated claims of property rights advocates – if they wave a magic wand and turn nonconforming into conforming properties?

But wait: there are no magic wands.  We don’t live in a world imagined by J. K. Rowling.  I’ve tried to imagine how the section in the SMP draft devoted to “Nonconforming Development” might be rewritten once the concept of nonconformity has been banished, and I’ve come up empty.  I think that trying to eliminate nonconformity (the word, mind you — not the thing itself) will impose a net loss of clarity on our regulations and have a cumulative impact on attempts to treat all the different shoreline properties and property owners fairly.

When I looked closely at the final version of the workgroup recommendations on nonconforming development, I couldn’t find a solid basis for the objections raised by property rights advocates.  (See “Regulatory Regimes and Citizens’ Resistance,” another post on this site, for more on this subject.)

This is how the goal of the SMP section devoted to nonconforming development is described in the draft dated July, 2011:

It is the purpose of this program to ultimately, over time, have uses and commercial structures conform to the provisions of this program. Uses and commercial structures that do not conform to the standards of this program should be eventually phased out. Residential structures which do not conform to this program should, over time, be brought into conformity as completely as possible, with due regard to unique site conditions and property rights.

Notice the distinction made between commercial and residential structures, and the “due regard” given to the rights of shoreline property owners.  This distinction was not made in the draft dated February 9, 2011.  I don’t blame shoreline residents for being upset by the earlier draft, but I have to wonder what part of the current policy statement is objectionable.

Nonconforming shoreline residences are not at risk of being “eventually phased out.”  The Shoreline Management Act, which our SMP must not contradict, is primarily concerned with protection of the environment, but it recognizes private property rights and designates single family residences as a “preferred use” of shoreline property.  (“Public access” is also a preferred use, in those parts of the shoreline not privately owned.)

The enumerated policies in the current SMP draft go a long way toward satisfying those who find nonconforming status an intolerable burden.  Here’s an example:

5.  Legally established nonconforming commercial structures which are located in the shoreline jurisdiction are to be phased out over time. Depending on the extent and intensity of the nonconformity, a primary residential structure and primary appurtenance may be allowed certain alteration or expansion, provided that adverse impacts to shoreline ecological functions and shoreline processes are mitigated or restored.

This policy recognizes that nonconformities are not all created equal; they vary in “extent and intensity.”  Some residential properties may be only technically at odds with the new SMP regulations.  (I would look at intrusions into a buffer zone in that light.)  Some waterfront lots may be too small to permit alteration or expansion, but SMP regulations didn’t create that problem.

It’s been said that nonconformity will make it difficult for shoreline property owners to obtain a mortgage or an insurance policy.  If this is true, it’s a recent development.  (At the bank that holds my mortgage, I’ve been assured that nonconforming status is not an issue, so long as the house was legally built and rebuilding is permitted.)

The Planning Commission and the Council will have to weigh the evidence and arguments brought forward by concerned citizens.  In a community such as ours, policy makers won’t be able to satisfy everyone, but if they aim for the goals of clarity and fairness, we will all be better off.

The specific instances of controversy over our SMP update lead me to some general reflections on regulations in our community, and the angry resistance that has been mounted against them.

There’s a broad historical background to this resistance, and I’d like to bring it into focus before turning to the specific local issues.  Let’s note first the growth of a conservative (or, as I would prefer to call it, reactionary) movement in the field of constitutional law.

Property rights claims figure prominently in this movement.  Regulatory regimes at the state and local levels have been subjected to legal challenges that may seem sporadic, based on support at the grass roots level, but many of these challenges have been sponsored by a systematic and ideologically driven effort to change our legal system and the basic values on which it rests.

Within the polarized terms of our current culture, private interests in freedom and economic advantage have been pitted against concern for the good of the general public and the integrity of resources (such as clean air, clean water, forests, wildlife, and open space) that belong to all of us, or to none of us.

It should be said that even necessary and justifiable regulations are bound to provoke reactions and rejection in some parts of our citizenry.  Throughout American history there’s a brave and honorable tradition of protest against bad laws and overreaching by legislators, lawyers, and judges.  There’s also a not so honorable tradition of overreaching by powerful private and corporate interests.

If you believe “that government is best which governs least,” you may consider most forms of regulation to be necessary evils at best, and you’ll like a law when it prevents your neighbor from harming you, but not when it limits your freedom.

Nationwide, many regulatory regimes and legislative and judicial actions have been challenged on the basis that they involve unconstitutional “takings” of property without due compensation.  In Washington state, ever since 1992, early in Christine Gregoire’s first term as Attorney General, local jurisdictions have been formally advised to avoid “regulatory takings.”  The latest version of Avoiding Unconstitutional Takings of Private Property dates from December, 2006.

The memorandum defines takings and counsels against overreaching, but it also acknowledges that valid regulations will have some impact on property values.  I quote: “The constitutional principles discussed in this Advisory Memorandum do not require compensation for every decline in the value of a piece of property.”

Caution on the part of regulatory agencies and local governments has not stopped the most vehement advocates of property rights from claiming that ordinances regulating land use and protection of the environment involve unconstitutional takings.  The notion that to render an existing use or structure “nonconforming” constitutes a “regulatory taking” would be a far-fetched argument if the matter is ever litigated.

Protests against takings were heard during the long ruckus surrounding our Critical Areas Ordinance, and it’s no surprise that they are being heard now in connection with the Shoreline Management Program.

These protests need to be heard; without them, our public process would be incomplete.  And they should be answered cogently, not brushed aside, especially when they are pertinent to specific passages in the draft SMP, and when concerned citizens offer alternative language and present decision-makers with policy choices.

As the updating of our Shoreline Management Program proceeds, one of the contentious issues to be dealt with will be “nonconforming” development.

That’s the terminology used in the current SMP and the draft now under review by the Planning Commission and the Council, referring to “uses and/or structures which were lawfully constructed or established prior to the effective date” of the revised SMP, “but which do not conform to present regulations or standards.”

An intensely interested group of Bainbridge Island citizens wants to eliminate such language from the SMP; they claim that the “nonconforming” label takes something away from the value of shoreline property.

References to nonconforming development have had a place in land use regulations and planning ever since zoning laws were developed early in the 20^th century.  Until recently, no one has regarded nonconforming status as problematic.

Plenty of nonconforming uses and/or structures exist, and have existed for decades, in many parts of the Island.  If your house was built before 1980, there’s a good chance that in some respects the property is not in conformity with all current and pertinent land use regulations.  You might not know it, and you’d have no need to know unless you were planning a major renovation that would change the footprint of your house or some other permanent structure.

Nonconformity is not illegal – not now, and not in the future.  State law doesn’t allow you to modify a structure in a way that increases its nonconformity, but you’re still free to improve your property in many ways.  You might find it to your advantage to bring your house closer to full compliance with current regulations, but such a decision is up to you, not to planners or the code compliance officer.

Before considering some of the regulations that will apply to nonconforming shoreline development if the language now in draft form is ultimately adopted by the Council, we need to look at a law that was enacted during the recent legislative session in Olympia.

Senate Bill 5451 provides guidance on nonconforming structures that is applicable statewide and pertinent to the revision of our SMP.  In its original form, SB 5451 stipulated that the following statement must be included in Shoreline Management Plans: “A structure legally established or vested on or before the effective date of a master program must be considered a conforming structure.”  This blunt language did not survive debate, however; the House and Senate eventually adopted a substitute bill that gives local jurisdictions a choice: continue to recognize and regulate nonconformity, or find some way to finesse it.

In the substitute SB 5451, enacted in April, this language appears: “Updated shoreline master programs must include provisions to ensure that expansion, redevelopment, and replacement of existing structures will result in no net loss of the ecological function of the shoreline.”  This is consistent with the established understanding that nonconforming structures may remain indefinitely, so long as nothing is done to increase their nonconformity.

Application of the “no net loss” standard, going forward but not retroactively, provides owners of nonconforming structures with a good deal: even if it can be shown that the nonconforming development had in the past imposed some loss of ecological function on the shoreline, its continuation will not be regarded as a “net loss,” but as a feature of the status quo against which losses and gains will be measured.

Further, in the draft regulations now being reviewed, changes in a nonconforming property are permissible if the owner can show that they add up to no net loss.

So why the big fuss over the term “nonconforming”?  It simply refers to facts of history and present-day reality.  Shoreline conditions change, and our understanding of what’s appropriate to promote beach stability and a healthy ecosystem changes as well, so regulations change too.  The new regulations apply most stringently to new development, of course, and existing development has to be accommodated indefinitely, along the lines described above.

In a community with a history going back to the middle of the 19^th century, in which shoreline properties were the first to be developed, there are bound to be properties that don’t conform to all requirements of the current SMP, let alone the update that’s now under discussion.  As we go forward, we should be true to our history and retain the useful terminology of nonconformity.

I’ll have more to say on this topic in another post.