Earth to Berkeley Oak Grove Protesters: Get Out of the Trees! (Part 3 of 5)

In December 2006, protestors claiming to represent the interests of the environment established residence in a grove of mature oak trees adjacent to Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, California. Their objective: to prevent the University of California from removing the oak grove to construct an athletic training facility. Supporting them in their endeavor are such reputable organizations as the Sierra Club, the California Native Plant Society, and the California Oak Foundation. The tree-sitters even have a website for their cause: http://www.saveoaks.com.

On the surface, the action of the protestors could seem like a bold, principled action to protect an important terrestrial ecosystem. Indeed, the felling of a mature oak grove is not an act to be celebrated. However, due to unintended consequences of the protestors’ actions, they are greatly damaging the cause of environmental protection, and producing a net loss to the environment.

In my previous post, I examined the problem of promoting sparse development. Today, let’s examine the opportunity cost of tree sitting.

Reason 2: Opportunity Costs a Fortune

The study of economics includes a fundamental concept referred to as “opportunity cost”. Opportunity cost refers to the cost of opportunities foregone as a consequence of one’s choices. For example, if you spend your Saturday afternoon painting your house, then you forego the opportunity to work overtime, go shopping, or travel out of town. To understand how the concept of opportunity cost applies to the tree-sitters, we need only ask what they could have done with their time and resources other than camp in the oak grove. The answer? A surprising lot.

  • Time Passes in the Trees, Too. As of this writing, the protesters have resided in the oak grove for longer than one year. According to their own website, arrests of 16 and 21 people have taken place on different days this fall. So let’s conservatively estimate their number at 20 protestors. 20 people times 365 days times 16 waking hours per day equals 116,800 person-hours that have been expended on this quest. By their own count, the protestors are tree-sitting in order to save 38 mature oaks. 116,800 divided by 38 equals 3,678 person-hours per tree!

  • Time Is Money. To put that into monetary terms, let’s imagine that the tree-sitters had instead used their time to earn money, then donated the proceeds to an environmentalist organization, or used the funds for an environmentally beneficial use. At a wage of $15 per hour, which could be earned at a low to medium skill job in the Bay Area, the estimated opportunity cost expended thus far of protecting each tree is $55,196 (= 3,678 * $15), and the total cost of expended to protect the oak grove has been $2,097,431 (= 116,800 * $15). That’s right, $2.1 million dollars!

  • Something Better to Do. Couldn’t the protestors have used their time for a more environmentally worthwhile endeavor? $2.1 million would allow them to purchase and protect a plot of tropical rainforest, with an entire intact ecosystem holding far more environmental worth than 38 trees on a semi-developed plot in urban Berkeley. How many solar panels could they have installed in those 116,800 person-hours? How much California farmland could they have recovered from unsustainable commercial agriculture and converted to permaculture? How many earth-saving clean technologies could they have developed and marketed? How many green policy directives could they have successfully lobbied? How many green-aspiring consumers could they have educated?

  • Time is Running Out. Just as we implore companies and consumers to be efficient in their use of natural resources, we too must recognize that our time as friends of the environment is a scarce resource. We are playing a giant game of catch-up, trying to patch leaks in the hull of our global environmental ship before time runs out. We must focus the time and the resources we have to patch the biggest, most serious holes first. If we fail to do so, our ship will sink.

  • Efficient Resource Use: Think Big! To solve our most serious environmental problems, we must think big. We need real solutions, sustainable frameworks that are more effective than the unsustainable frameworks currently in place, and we need people to implement them. People who care as much as the oak-dwellers need to use their brains to create big solutions to big problems – this is how we create a better world.
Protecting our natural environmental resources is a critically important objective – let’s accomplish the most we possibly can. Just as we advocate the efficient use of natural resources, we also must use our human and monetary resources most efficiently. We must think big!

In my next post, I will examine how the tree-sitters are hindering the advance of sustainability by alienating potential allies to our cause.

Earth to Berkeley Oak Grove Protesters: Get Out of the Trees! (Part 2 of 5)

In December 2006, protestors claming to represent the interests of the environment established residence in a grove of mature oak trees adjacent to Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, California. Their objective: to prevent the University of California from removing the oak grove to construct an athletic training facility. Supporting them in their endeavor are such reputable organizations as the Sierra Club, the California Native Plant Society, and the California Oak Foundation. The tree-sitters even have a website for their cause: http://www.saveoaks.com.

On the surface, the action of the protestors could seem like a bold, principled action to protect an important terrestrial ecosystem. Indeed, the felling of a mature oak grove is not an act to be celebrated. However, due to unintended consequences of the protestors’ actions, they are greatly damaging the cause of environmental protection, and producing a net loss to the environment.

In my previous post, I summarized our key arguments. Today, let’s examine the unintended consequences to understand what went wrong, beginning with the problem of promoting sparse development:

Reason 1: Promoting Sprawl

Protestors believe they are protecting the environment by impeding the construction of the athletic center on the site of the oak grove. But what would happen if protesters successfully prevented the construction on the site of the oak grove?

The university will still build the athletic center, and would need to find an alternative location to do so. What consequences would such an alternative carry? The short answer is:

Because it would promote sprawl, an alternative placement of the athletic center would actually be worse for the environment. How could this be?

  • Close proximity preserves campus walkability. The university claims that the oak grove is the most suitable site for the athletic center, since the center needs to be close to Memorial Stadium to provide athletes with accessibility to classrooms and other nearby athletic facilities. From a human standpoint, this is a sensible, credible claim, since the athletic center would best serve the needs of student athletes if it were conveniently located in close proximity to academic and athletic facilities.

  • Alternative sites would also displace ecosystems. An athletic center built at an alternative location would impact an ecosystem of its own (unless the location were a brownfield, in which case expensive remediation would be required); like the oak grove, this ecosystem would also be damaged or destroyed by the building of the athletic center. However, as opposed to the University-favored oak grove site, an alternative site for the athletic center would be located at additional distance from the existing athletic and educational facilities.

  • Distance replaces walkability with energy-intensive transport. With an athletic center located at an additional distance from facilities (alternative sites thus far suggested have been Golden Gate Fields Racetrack in Albany, Edwards Stadium on the opposite end of campus, or the Oakland Coliseum), athletes would no longer be able to walk to and from the athletic center and other athletic and educational facilities in a sufficiently brief time span to allow them to attend classes and fulfill other obligations. At a minimum, this would force the university to establish a shuttle service from the current to new location, and encourage some athletes to drive cars to and from practice and training sessions. These buses and cars would burn oil, further lining the pockets of oil companies and spewing carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the air. Not exactly a favorable outcome for friends of the environment.
The Case for Dense Development

Although it seems counterintuitive to many environmentalists, dense development is actually far more environmentally friendly than sparse development (i.e., sprawl). Americans have approximately twice the ecological and carbon footprint of our comparably wealthy European counterparts in large part because our inefficient use of land resources causes us to drive automobiles for the vast majority of our daily transportation needs. Let’s examine the following simple example:

Colonia, a newly discovered island, has an area of 100 acres, all of which are inhabitable but currently covered by wilderness. Along comes a colonial ship carrying 100 families on board. Which settlement model would be environmentally more efficient and preferable:
  • Option A, where each family were assigned a one-acre plot with which to do as they pleased; or
  • Option B, where the 100 families settled into a town with a land area of two acres, used eight acres for agriculture and resource production, and left the remaining land unsettled?
Option B would leave 90 acres of unspoiled ecosystem, while Option A would leave no wilderness. Furthermore, the inhabitants of Option A’s Colonia would now need to drive cars or use other energy-intensive transport modes in order to obtain commodities, meet with their fellow citizens, and accomplish essential survival tasks. These energy-intensive transport modes would require an extensive network of roads, rails, or other costly infrastructure.

Not only would Option A’s Colonia damage the environment far more severely, it would also be far more expensive to construct and maintain than Option B’s efficient arrangement. Instead of wasting their wealth on transport necessary to perform basic tasks, the inhabitants of Option B’s Colonia would be free to spend their money elsewhere.

Unfortunately, America has largely followed the development path of Option A’s Colonia. In fact, the description of Option A bears striking resemblance to homesteading, the original method of settlement of much the western United States.

Our residences are separated from our workplaces, social spaces, and commercial destinations by distances far greater than we can reasonably walk. We rely on oil-hungry, pollution-spewing cars to accomplish even simple tasks like purchasing groceries. In order to reverse car dependency, we must institute intelligent land use policies that prevent sprawl, develop densely, and promote walkable, livable communities.

Once we follow the dense development path, we will be both:
  • Healthier, due to increased exercise and decreased pollution; and
  • Wealthier, due to the time and money we reclaim from traffic jams, collisions, insurance, and fuel costs.
Summary

New building construction on any site will displace an intact or partially intact ecosystem, but construction under a dense development strategy conserves resources, reduces pollution, and provides health benefits as indirect consequences. The construction of the athletic center on the oak grove site would preserve walkability for student-athletes and support staff, while the construction of the athletic center on the proposed alternative sites would encourage vehicle use.
Therefore, from an environmental and economic perspective, an athletic center sited next to an existing stadium is far preferable to a sprawling campus extension or an off-campus, commute-necessitating site.

In my next post, I will examine the opportunity cost of tree-sitting.

Earth to Berkeley Oak Grove Protesters: Get Out of the Trees! (Part 1 of 5)

In December 2006, protestors claming to represent the interests of the environment established residence in a grove of mature oak trees adjacent to Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, California. Their objective: to prevent the University of California from removing the oak grove to construct an athletic training facility. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Oak_Grove_Protest).

Supporting them in their endeavor are such reputable organizations as the Sierra Club, the California Native Plant Society, and the California Oak Foundation. The tree-sitters even have a website for their cause: http://www.saveoaks.com.

On the surface, the action of the protestors could seem like a bold, principled action to protect an important terrestrial ecosystem. Indeed, the felling of a mature oak grove is not an act to be celebrated. However, due to unintended consequences of the protestors’ actions, they are greatly damaging the cause of environmental protection, and producing a net loss to the environment.

How are the protestors unintentionally hindering sustainability efforts?

1. Promoting Sprawl: Wherever buildings are constructed, preexisting ecosystems are altered or destroyed. Construction of the athletic center on the oak grove site would preserve walkability, while an alternative site would likely involve oil-fueled, pollution-spewing transportation, and destruction of other ecosystems or natural habitats. Preservation of the of the oak grove with the consequence of a distantly-located athletic center would accomplish nothing for the environment at best, while at worst would directly harm the environment.

2. Opportunity Costs a Fortune: The oak grove protestors have invested thousands of person-hours in protecting, by their own admission, just 38 trees. As friends of the environment, our time is a scarce resource that we must invest wisely. The protestors could have used these thousands of person-hours far more productively to save forests, not just trees; to curb pollution; to develop clean technology; to educate; to lobby; to set an example of sustainable progress. Time is running out on global-scale environmental problems with serious consequences – we must think bigger!

3. Alienating Potential Allies: Highly publicized tree-sits foster ill will and misperception of environmentalists and of sustainability, by projecting an image that environmentalists stand for plants over people, trivialities over significance, their own sense of importance over substantive accomplishments. To mobilize the public to support their interests, environmentalists need to present themselves as leaders of practicality, purveyors of sustainable solutions to that will better the world. As with any war, The Green War will be won or lost by people; therefore, to win, we must unite our potential allies towards the goal of a greener, brighter future.

4. Protest Over Progress: In the early years of environmentalism, protest was an important tool. However, protest itself does not produce solutions, and therefore is used only by the disadvantaged and powerless. Today, we can do better than protest. True greens now have the chance to become the majority, to gain unprecedented influence on the future direction of the world through traditional institutions and exercise of power. We must drive the world to a better future, because we are the only ones with the necessary knowledge and will to guide it. If we stand in the way of progress, we will perish in the ensuing fray. We must exchange protest for progress.

In my following posts, I will examine the details behind the preceding points.