Am I "just a NIMBY"?

The hardest part for me about opening up the Lower San Pedro Valley to be a powerline corridor is not that it’s an “unfortunate sacrifice” we have to make for green energy, but that green energy is being used as an excuse to industrialize the valley. Previous attempts to exploit the valley for outside gain were thwarted because enough people recognized that the wild nature of the valley was more valuable to the whole than the value of a particular project. Up to this point, the valley's value as mitigation for other exploitive projects has won out. The SunZia Transmission Line project, by tying itself to "Green Energy" even though it wasn't initially, has successfully set up a false dichotomy between "saving the planet" vs "saving the valley". In this dichotomy, those living here who are fixated on "saving the valley" over "saving the planet" are just NIMBYs.

But I would argue that the opposition here is far more philosophical. What attracted us to this valley was the influence of thinkers like Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, and Jim Corbett. These thinkers embrace a land ethic that recognizes the rights of the land itself and reject the human-centric entitlement that leads to attempts to control nature, ultimately reducing it down to a barely-functioning ecosystem. Many who have been drawn to this valley recognize that modern technocratic society requires the enslavement of both people and land, including its non-human inhabitants.

Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the esthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture.

That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics. That land yields a cultural harvest is a fact long known, but latterly often forgotten.

-- Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, 1984

The decades of work that residents have dedicated to this valley to preserve some semblance of a whole ecosystem that embodies a different way to relate to our home than the unsustainable economies of continued growth that drives modern society will be truly challenged by the coming decades of industrialization that the valley will face once ground breaks for the SunZia Transmission Line project. For the two proposed lines will only be the beginning. Other lines are sure to follow due to the federal requirement to colocate future power lines with current infrastructure, something that has been conveniently ignored in this case. The wind farms being served by the power lines alone will demand great amounts of copper, not to mention what will be required for the actual power lines between New Mexico and probably California. Even more will be required for the plan to ship wind power from Wyoming to California. That demand is being used to justify the planned copper mine downriver from us and many others.

What this all represents is the continued enslavement of the land despite the obvious impacts this strategy has had in the past, and using those impacts as the excuse to continue the same strategy. One could say that it is the very definition of insanity. Let's continue to use the same shovel to dig our way out of the hole we are in.

Human greed cultivates violence, but not because it wants too much. It aspires to too little. In choosing to possess and consume the earth, greed chooses death over life, escapist gratifications over cocreativity. The choice of life over death, for the biotic community as a whole, is the descriptive core of a land ethic. It is also the choice of liberty over enslavement, for all of us. Humankind itself can’t become fully free and enabled until the whole community to which we belong is freed.

-- Sanctuary for All Life: Wildland Pastoralism and the Peaceable Kingdom, by James A. Corbett

The promise of clean power, even unlimited power, promotes a relationship to the land that will ultimately undercut the very foundation of life by promoting continued growth that requires the consumption of all of our wildlands. It increases demand and does nothing to create an ethic of living in balance with all of life. Instead, we need to begin the process of releasing the land from human bondage and learning to live in a symbiotic relationship with it before we all end up living in hermetically sealed environments that completely cut us off from reality.

Overstated? Maybe. But if we continue to abstract ourselves away from reality, we allow our lands to be further enslaved and exploited. We ultimately become INMBYs* and look the other way.

When humans destroy forests, grasslands, swamps, coral reefs and other living systems, we are not only harming other species but also destroying our own food supplies, subjecting our homes to extreme weather and polluting our air and water. Though we treat conservation as an altruistic pursuit — a special interest championed by a passionate few — it’s also a selfish cause. We should approach conservation not as an opportunity for heroics, but as an obligation to the relationships we depend on for survival.

-- "Those Adorable Endangered Creatures Are Not the Point"

At the recent COP15 conference, a majority of the world's governments agreed that biodiversity and intact ecosystems are required for the human species to survive. It was also estimated that it will take hundreds of billions of dollars to restore some kind of balance. Yet, here in this valley and all along the route that has been chosen, millions of tax dollars are going to be spent to build hundreds of miles of new roads through currently intact ecosystems, setting up decades of construction and heavy machinery that will impact wildlands that should be counted towards what we need to survive

Fighting for the wildlands and biodiversity in this valley is not intended to push these projects on to other wildlands that are not in our sight. It is an attempt to rethink our relationship to land itself, to choose projects that locate the source of energy we need closer to those that are using it, to reconnect people to the very systems that allow them to live, and to live in a way that does not require the enslavement of others. Ultimately, to create resilient communities that are not so vulnerable to the changes that are coming, changes that are already showing the vulnerabilities in our current way of doing things.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this project is the key to "saving this planet". So, what would I need to not oppose this particular project?

• I would need to believe that there were real alternatives considered and that there is ample evidence that this route did the least harm to our overall biotic community.

• I would need to believe that this project was not tied to an attempt to corner the market on wind power by a Canadian company that has no real connection to this land and people.

• I would need to believe that it actually makes sense to ship wind power to California from New Mexico instead of sending that power to local cities like Albuquerque, Sante Fe, Silver City, and El Paso.

• I would need to believe that the route through this valley isn't part of a plan by some in the State of Arizona to open up this valley for more industrialization despite its designation by multiple organizations as critically-important habitat.

• I would need to believe that this valley wasn't chosen just because it was cheap, making the project enticing to investors.

Until then, I guess I am a NIMBY because where I live makes me very aware of where we are headed and that there is a need for more NIMBYs as we seek to recreate some sort of balance in this world. But I don't believe I am "just a NIMBY".

* It's Not MY Back Yard.