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The following is the text of a presentation
made by SDET editor Carolyn Chase to a one-day workshop held
at the University of California, San Diego last month, entitled
"Community Development, Affordable Housing and the Environment
- Is There a Common Path to Smart Growth?"
 irst, I'd like to thank Nico Calavita for giving me
such a great title for my talk today: "Protecting the Environment
- What Environmentalists Do." Because it got me thinking.
What the heck am I doing? This is always an enlightening question
to pursue.
 One
thing about environmentalists and environmentalism is that you
will find a very diverse range of opinions on what to do. Furthermore,
there is an almost infinite list of things that someone could
do, from the merely trivial to the utterly overwhelming.
When someone actually decides to be an environmentalist,
it often has to do with a response to some type of threat to
a person's environment, their family or an area or place that
they love. This often triggers an activist response. There are
also a large percentage of people who I would call "private
environmentalists." These folks take personal action but
eschew participation in public discourse about issues.
Then there are educational environmentalists. They
share about their experiences in nature, lead hikes, volunteer
as docents and are part of a wide range of educational and practical
activities about nature and ecology.
Finally, there are activists. Activists in any movement
have similar aims: to educate others and move then to action
to do something to help. To save something. To support or create
something. To be a part of the public process that stands up
for conserving and protecting things. This includes both lobbying
and non-lobbying activities, personal and group activities from
traditional letter and phone - and now email - campaigns, to
what some consider eco-terrorism. There is a lot of individual
environmental activism.
About the most famous environmental activist right
now is a young woman name Julia "Butterfly" Hill who
has camped in an old growth redwood tree in Northern California
for going on two years.
Environmental activists can be found in a range of
issue categories, and the politics vary by category too. Generally,
the categories are: water, air, waste reduction/recycling and
biodiversity. Especially at the local level, it's involvement
in land use decisions that impact sensitive habitats.
Many environmentalists work to save remote places
from mining, logging or other forms of intrusions. Others are
working in urban areas trying to deal with toxic pollution and
hazardous waste and the legacy of dirty sites. Still others work
to attempt to enforce the range of environmental laws that have
been enacted, including those at the federal level: The Clean
Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental
Protection Act, Superfund legislation really, the list goes on
and on. And there are state and local equivalents.
Most experienced activists can tell you that getting
laws is one thing; enforcing them is another. I understand this
is an area where we have lots of common cause with housing activists!
Most environmental activists spend time reviewing
project documents and responding to the issues that are being
brought up - or are not brought up. In California, the California
Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA, requires disclosure
of environmental impacts and analysis of alternatives prior to
project permitting. Since San Diego has a track record of attempting
to get away with inadequate action with respect to CEQA, this
can be important work.
You are probably all familiar with the ball park case
at this point. Two other recent environmental examples with the
City of San Diego illustrate this point.
When the X Games were going for their permit, the
City attempted to issue it, declaring there would be no impact
and no required mitigation for running these games right next
to an endangered least tern nesting site during hatching season.
San Diego Audubon filed suit to require mitigation and the City
settled out of court.
Right now, there is a permit in the process for an
8-day jet ski event proposed to be held in Mission Bay in October.
The City issued a Mitigated Negative Declaration under CEQA.
The section for water pollution stated the planned mitigation
would be limited to requiring drip pans in the pit areas. Jet
skis discharge up to 30 percent of their oil-gas fuel mixture
directly into the water. Ignorance, corruption, or oversight
- the point is, without citizen involvement there would not even
be a chance to discuss this pollution, much less reduce or stop
it. As it is, the City is still planning to claim the impact
of 750 jet skis spewing thousands of gallons of raw fuel into
Mission Bay is insignificant.
So that brings us to another form of environmentalists:
attorneys and those citizens who organize to sue for enforcement
or implementation of environmental laws. Local examples of this
are Baykeeper and the Environmental Health Coalition.
There is also a need for people to lobby and work
on behalf of new legislation. Just recently, the city held its
public hearings on the budget. Donna Frye of Surfers Tired of
Pollution was right there, asking for funding for the storm-water
pollution prevention program. I went to ask for expansion of
curbside recycling, funding for the Multiple Species Conservation
Program, and increased sustainable energy investments, in addition
to funding for a number of environmental restoration projects
scheduled in many park master plans but without any funding.
What's my form of environmentalism? Besides applying
many things in my personal life, my activism work centers around
writing and networking and attempting to put environmental connections
into the information flow. I'm an amplifier, and a missionary
of sorts. I write about issues in what I hope are humorous ways.
I run email lists on topics of interest so that people who do
care about environmental issues and want to be active in the
civic culture have a quick and easy way to tap in to the flow
of information and events.
I constantly strive to encourage and inspire people,
and empower them to participate by whatever means they can. I
founded one local group, San Diego EarthWorks, that organizes
the annual EarthFair in Balboa Park each April. EarthFair 2000
will be the 11th annual Earth Day event, hosting more than 200
local groups. Every year, we draw between 50,000 and 75,000 people.
It is organized by more than 300 local volunteers. Last year,
we estimate that 75 percent of our volunteers were new and had
never volunteered for anything before. So, I know that there
is a huge reservoir of volunteer ability and capacity in the
San Diego region if you know how to tap into it.
I believe strongly that civic activism of any kind
starts with connections, awareness, education, more awareness
and action. I also strongly believe in Martin Luther King's observation
about social change and what it takes: agitate, negotiate, litigate.
In our culture, before you can get folks to be willing to agitate,
you have connect with them in their busy lives and find ways
to sustain those connections. I think Dr. King was referring
to what we, as citizens, have to do in order to change the system
to get justice. But now I'm afraid it applies to what activists
of any kind have to do with the body politic itself. You almost
have to agitate to get people to engage in political processes
at all.
So I also teach people Politics 101 - or I should
say, Politics 1, since it seems that political processes are
not being taught particularly well in our schools.
I teach people where city hall is, how to fill out
a speaker's slip - and not speak (at first) and how to find out
who their elected representatives are. I serve on a few boards
including San Diego EarthWorks, Citizen's Coordinate for Century
3 [C3, San Diego's oldest civic group for good public planning],
the City's Waste Management Advisory Board and the San Diego
League of Conservation Voters. I also serve on the Sierra Club's
California Legislative Committee and am a consultant on the upcoming
Earth Day 2000 international campaign being planned in 150 countries.
My biggest personal project at the moment is exploring
what my family can personally do to identify and reduce our global
warming impacts, and write about it. This is also related to
the Earth Day 2000 campaign, which is an effort to increase the
speed of the required transition away from polluting fossil fuel-based
energy systems and into the real "solar age." I just
spent two weeks test driving an electric car after identifying
that changing to an electric car would be the #1 biggest thing
a person with my profile could do [see story on page 2].
With all the other things I mentioned, by now you're
likely wondering: where in the world does global warming fit
it? Frankly, to think that any one individual can have an impact
on global warming is probably a form of arrogance. But the reason
for my doing it is to really find out, and share with others
what I find out. Because at some point, every change must begin
and end with individuals deciding how it fits into their world
and understanding how they can change and why it's important.
And if they can't change, to be a part of helping to overhaul
the systems we're all trapped in, and to ask for change through
the political system. A lot of the problems that both environmentalists
and housing advocates face are systemic, which makes them terribly
difficult to deal with and always requires something beyond an
individual's response.
But at some level, it still begins with me. And with
a dozen, then a hundred, then a thousand others figuring out
what can be done about a problem and determining to do what they
can. So my husband has scavenged some solar panels for our roof.
And perhaps my mentioning it here today will inspire some others
to explore what they can do. Because ultimately we are extremely
unlikely to be able to convince elected officials to use the
power of government to help without a sufficient number of people
willing to work for change at all levels. In the case of global
warming, there is simply no chance that the prevailing Congress
could do anything substantive. Without leadership from the American
people, they literally cannot change away from fossil fuels.
So I consider that it's the job of all environmentalists
to connect with others and create change. And that's the main
point of just about everything I try and do. It's all connected
and all about showing people the environmental connections to
everything we do.
Overall, I think that this is the single common purpose
that every environmentalist should have: to discover the environmental
connections of their actions and do something about improving
their actions. To figure out how they are connected to the ongoing
health or decline of the natural and, I believe, also the built
systems we are dependent upon.
And this is why I'm here today - to learn about the
connections that environmentalists should have with supporting
progress in the way housing needs can be met, in ways that support
the needed healthy environment for everyone.
It seems to me that smart growth is growth that supports
the economy, the environment and the community. Like a holy trinity
or a defense triad, if you shortchange one of the legs, the stability
of the triad is weakened. Powerful forces consistently move to
shortchange the community and the environment. The result is
reduced quality of life for everyone. Frankly, whenever I hear
the forecasted growth from the San Diego Regional Assoc. of Governments
of about 50 percent in 20 years - that alarms me! Another million
people coming here and the presumed million after that. And don't
forget, another million San Diegans means another million cars
or more. Doesn't it alarm any of you? The very fact that everyone
in the public process spouts out growth figures like that without
even blinking an eye should tell you something about our local
political addictions to growth at any cost.
I agree with San Diego Mayoral candidate Jim Bell,
who has dubbed the County's so-called Smart Growth Coalition
as "A Little Less Stupid Growth." There is no emerging
effort from that to show any real coalition-building potential.
And what about a future with a sensitive approach
to the environment and housing?
I feel it would be remiss of me not to point out that
there are divisions within what you might loosely call the environmental
community. Many NIMBYs use environmental issues and environmental
laws to stop projects they are opposed to for other personal
reasons. I should also add that the best way to deal with NIMBYs
is to address their reasonable issues. I always try to understand
and remember that if I were in their position on many projects,
I might be a NIMBY, too.
This also brings me to mention that environmentalists
and housing advocates also have common opponents. In working
on the Prop K and M in the last election - the Future Urbanizing
proposals in Carmel Valley - it became clear pretty quickly that
there were major factions who simply didn't want the density
near them. This is also the rational marketplace choice: if you
could get 1,000 4-acre estates instead of a 20,000-person community
next to you, what would you work for? The question I worked on
was what was the best for the region, the environment, the transportation
and drainage systems, and to require a range of housing be built
there. But I also want to add that because it will be new housing,
it's likely that none of it can really qualify as affordable,
although they will meet the legal standard. And they will be
building everything from apartments to mansions.
I do believe that the more environmentalist and housing
activists can work together, the more successes we can achieve.
Working apart plays into the hands of the status quo.
Although activists rarely seem to feel they have the
time for it, most substantive progress is made through the often
difficult and time-consuming process of building true coalitions.
Personally, I hold out great hope that the use of email and the
internet will help in the formation of more effective local networks
in support of conservation and quality of life issues throughout
the region.
Thank you for your time today. 
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