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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbe who wrote (52203)	8/20/1999 11:21:00 AM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

That crunching sound you hear is a pair of rose colored glasses being ground under my shoes. I am not a total stranger to sustainable development. In the 1980s my consulting group was hired to prepare a tourism plan for San Juan County. After much research, our conclusion was that a commitment to sustainable development was essential if we were to preserve the values which made the San Juan Islands a desirable place to live and visit, and that a continuation of the trends of growth in the industry would eventually, and not too far down the road, destroy the very aspects of the islands which the tourism industry depended on. Our report and plan were vehemently opposed by the local tourism industry, (who not so incidentally were major campaign contributors), who said that this sustainability stuff was crap and that of course the industry recognized the value of the environment and would never do anything to destroy it and they could be trusted to build without limits and still preserve the environmental values of the islands. The plan was quietly shelved. The results we predicted are becoming increasingly visible. I don't know whether you are familiar with the article "The Tragedy of the Commons." It was a major focus of our study and plan. It is still perhaps one of the best pieces of writing on sustainability that I know of.