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 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.