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San Mateo County, CA June 6, 2006 Election
Smart Voter

Environmental Issues

By Richard Gordon

Candidate for County Supervisor; County of San Mateo; Supervisorial District 3

This information is provided by the candidate
Supervisor Richard Gordon

Remarks at the Pacifica Chamber of Commerce Annual Installation and Awards Dinner

January 19, 2006

I am pleased to be with you tonight on the occasion of your Annual Dinner. Twenty-four hours ago I got off a plane from New Zealand and Australia, so I am particularly glad to be with you. Since I have not yet had time to develop my pictures, there will not be the traditional and boring post vacation slide show.

But this will also not be the traditional political speech by a county leader. You will have to bear with me.

I find that travel broadens your perspective. It gives you new ways of looking at things. There are ideas and concepts that have been in my constellation of thought over the past several months and in some ways the time away and the places that I visited have crystallized these thoughts.

And this is what I want to share with you tonight:

  • We live on a fragile and delicate planet.

  • Business and government are currently not doing enough to guarantee our future on this planet.

  • Our future depends on embracing sustainability and developing a shared vision for tomorrow.

There are certain pictures that capture our imagination and change the way we see things. A young girl running down the road escaping the napalm in Vietnam. A group of African-American college students sitting at the "white only" section of a lunch counter.

One such picture was the image of the earth captured from one of the first satellites. There hanging so alone in the dark background of space was this fragile and delicate blue ball. Many of us finally understood that our resources are finite.

We have used our resources without understanding the consequences.

We cut down our trees thinking that there was another forest just over the next hill. I am not sure how many of you have heard of the concept of "Peak Oil". Experts now say that we have used over half of the world's total supply of oil (hence we are beyond the peak). We are now using oil at the fastest rate in the entire history of the planet. And what about our record with water. We have abused our creeks, rivers, bays, and oceans as if they were dumping grounds for every refuse and waste that we could create.

We have altered our environment without understanding the consequences.

One of the great thrills from my recent trip was the opportunity to snorkel at the Great Barrier Reef. There is an inner reef and an outer reef. Tourists used to visit the inner reef, but now must travel to the outer reef. The phosphates from the golf courses along the Australian shore line are killing the inner reef.

When New Zealand broke off from the rest of the southern continent, it had no mammals. Mammals had to be introduced, so sheep were first brought for food and fiber. Someone then introduced rabbits, but the rabbits had no predators so they multiplied like bunnies. Soon the rabbits destroyed the grazing lands and the sheep could not be sustained. The New Zealand government has a program of bounty payments for dead rabbits today.

Off Oyster Point in South San Francisco there used to be one of the most prolific shellfish beds on the Pacific coast, but the mercury and the siltation from hydraulic mining during the California gold rush and man-made pollution killed off the mussels, clams, and oysters.

Isn't it ironic that we pay farmers to put chemicals on the land and then we have to pay someone else to remove those same chemicals from our water.

At the turn of the century in the year 2000, the United Nations completed the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Their report says, "Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of the Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted."

I speak to you tonight as members of the Chamber of Commerce and my message is that business is not adequately addressing these environmental issues. The focus of business is most frequently short-term. The concern is about the next quarter's profits and not the long term. We could be building more hybrid cards, but there is not enough profit in that. Homes could be built with solar energy, but developers say there is no market. Disposable products are cheaper to produce, so production is not based on sustainability and our landfills pile up with more and more stuff.

Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's has said, "Business managers usually make decisions based on price and quality. There is an approach which adds a third dimension: the positive or negative impact on the local, national, and global community."

The economy and the environment are not enemies. Business can work in a sustainable environment, but business must remember that profit and growth are not the only measures of success.

Robert Kennedy once said, "The gross domestic product or GDP is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. GDP measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."

To the extent that I have criticized business, let me also criticize the sector that I represent + the public sector. Government increasingly also does not have a long term perspective. The focus is on the annual budget cycle and current expenditures. The time frame of most elected officials is the next election. And, as I have said in other venues, there is no constituency for change. The electorate generally likes the status quo.

As one example of the failure of the public sector let me cite the record of our federal government on climate change. Last week there was conference on global warming in Australia. Our government joined with representative of other countries who have not signed the Kyoto accords and with representatives of the oil industry at this conference. The focus of the conference was on how to use technology to manage greenhouse gas emissions. One serious proposal was to store carbon emissions in large underground caves or storage caverns. There was no discussion of reducing or eliminating these gases. There was little mention of alternative fuel and energy sources.

The earth is fragile and business and government are not adequately addressing environmental issues. It is within this context that I believe that we must do two things: embrace sustainability and create a vision for our future.

In the United Kingdom there is an organization called the Accounting for Sustainability Group. They issued a report called, "Realizing Aspirations", which provides great insight into this concept of sustainability.

Sustainability means taking into account the wider and longer term consequences of decisions. It means thinking about the impact of economic activities + things bought, investments made, waste thrown away + on the natural and human resources on which they ultimately depend. It means ensuring that the productive capacity of these resources is not permanently damaged and that they are not depleted faster than they can be replenished.

In simple business terms, an economy is sustainable when it meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations.

We must embrace sustainability and create a vision for our future.

Helen Keller was once asked if there was anything worse than losing your sight. Her response was, "Yes, losing your vision."

We need to think about the consequences of our actions and dream what might be possible. Our hope for a future on this fragile planet depends on a future that includes a vision of an environment protected. We need clean air, clean water, and a respect for all species. We need to utilize renewable fuels. We need to fish and farm without destroying the oceans and the land. When we can articulate our desire for the future, when we are capable of dreaming; as a people anything is possible.

You might ask, how does this relate to San Mateo County and Pacifica? I believe that we need a shared vision for our region. We need to think beyond our twenty cities and communities. I believe that this vision must include the following:

  • We must protect our open space by building higher density on redeveloped and in-fill lands along the transportation corridors of CalTrain and Highway 101.

  • We must improve and enhance public transportation. If we are finally going to get people out of their single occupancy vehicles, we need transit that is accessible, predictable, and safe.

  • We must have a focus on water that includes increased conservation, the use of recycled water, and an identification of new water sources for all uses including restoring watershed habitat.

  • We must develop new and improved storm water management techniques in order to protect our watersheds and our bay.

  • We must encourage and support emerging efforts in our agricultural community to develop organic farming.

I come to this discussion of the economy and the environment with a sense of hope. Business and government can look to the future. We are resourceful and our people will embrace sustainability. We must start the conversation on these matters and I thank you for allowing me to do that tonight.

Prince Charles was recently in San Francisco and in a keynote address on the environment given to business and political leaders at the San Francisco Ferry Building he said, "There are clearly no easy answers, but our actions, or inactions, will make a profound difference to the lives that our descendents will lead. . . . Somehow we have to find the courage to re-assert the once commonplace belief that human beings have a duty, a duty, to act as the stewards of creation."

There is an African proverb that says that the earth is not given to us by our parents; it is lent to us by our children.

The earth is not given to us by our parents; it is lent to us by our children.

I invite you to join with me in this conversation; so that our economies can be strong, our environment protected, and our future secured.

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