Craig,
I don't know how well-traveled you are, but from my experience, Mr. Nugent is right on.
BTW, when Bobby Kennedy Jr. gives up his private jets, choppers, yatchs, family mansions, and limos perhaps he may have some standing for his preaching. Ditto for the still handsome "do as I say not as I do" Robert Redford. I have to wonder what multiple of a composite energy consumption measure he enjoys relative to the average Bob. Oh, to be rich and beautiful!
Mike Golden,
We are probably closer on the issue of pollution- its detection, control, and remediation when needed- than it might seem. I nearly always recommend to clients when they purchase investment real estate that they ask for a Phase I report as a condition of the sale.
I have no problem at all with holding those responsible for breaking the law fully accountable. On the other hand, there needs to be some grandfathering of permitted uses under prior legislation, and when this is not feasible, the cost to comply with the new rules ought to be borne by those benefiting from it, i.e. the community or society at large.
In the P & Z process followed by permitting, there has to be a way to streamline it and minimze its costs. One way might be to shift the burden to the interveners to prove, at their cost, that the proposed use poses a sufficient societal threat that should cause it to be delayed for further study, modified, or scrapped all together.
BTW, I am curious. What was the average life span of native Americans in the 1600s? I've never heard of a longitudinal study back to those days, but I surmise that there is some skeletal evidence. Was it as high as 40 years?
I am also interested in your assertion "There's absolutely no reason why affordable housing and full employment cannot coexist with responsible environmental legislation and controls. It already does in many parts of the country." Can you please enumerate a few of those examples? And no, Gothenburg (sp), Nebraska doesn't count.
Finally, your comment "I love golf, but if we lose a few new golf courses to an overreaction to the concerns for the environment I believe that's a small price to pay for the progress made since the early 70's in this area." is very heady and admirable on its face. I do have to wonder how you would feel if it was YOUR livelyhood and passion that was being sacrificied at the altar of environmental overreaction and extremism.
Not that I am a perfect practioner by any means, but it all comes down to the golden rule- do onto others as you have them do onto you (not he who has the gold makes the rules). The means (planting a rare toad to thawrt development, burning down homes and condominiums during construction) simply cannot be justified by someone's perception of a glorious and virtuous end (a pristine environment).
Much more progress can be achieved by each of us individually following our own environmentally responsible regime. Just managing our own trash and energy consumption would go a long ways. How we use, store, and dispose of our own yard and household products probably has a much larger cumulative effect on the environment than all the 18,000 or so golf courses in the country. We should all remember that when we point the finger at a company for not doing enough to clean the air and the water, three other fingers point right back. Proportionally, that is probably way too light.