Year 2, Month 6, Day 5: We Need This Land For Future Exploitation!

Something a little different today. The Fall River Herald News (MA) runs a guest editorial from a couple of real-estate guys, extolling the importance of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection — from an economic POV. Good stuff, especially for those people who aren’t persuaded by anything other than the slavering jaws of naked capitalism:

It’s not every day the real estate community and the environmental community share common ground.

Increasingly, however, we understand a healthy economy and a healthy environment are mutually beneficial. We also understand the commonwealth, like every other state, faces a fiscal crisis that must be met with painful budget cuts and a disciplined focus on economic development. But we must avoid cuts which undermine the very economic growth and job creation essential to our recovery.

The commonwealth’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is more than a protector of the environment.

The “climate change news” for today (5/24) is all Australia, all the time. I haven’t gotten into an Aussie newspaper yet (though I did make New Zealand once), so I did a search for something closer to home. Sent May 24:

The “conflicting interests” of the real estate and environmental communities vanish when things are viewed from the proper perspective. It is only in the past century that people began purchasing land in order to make a quick profit; the notion of real estate as a short-term, high-yield investment is a relatively novel one. It’s also an idea with profoundly damaging consequences for the long-term health of entire regions, for if the land’s owners never know the land as our forbears once did, nothing can prevent grotesquely destructive exploitation. Nothing, that is, except local regulations and the Department of Environmental Protection. Needless to say, both of these are under attack from budget-cutting proponents, which makes the authors’ cogent defense of the DEP’s core mission very welcome. The interests of real-estate investors and environmentalists necessarily coincide; both groups have an interest in keeping the land alive and beautiful for centuries to come.

Warren Senders