I’m sorry, but this seems like a very libertarian view of conservatism.
Like how they tried to solve these problems with the idea of personal action.
We simply don’t have the capital to combat the groups that really couldn’t give a fuck
Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
121–130 of 156 posts
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#122Land ownership as a concept sits uneasily with me. Much of the land is owned by people who are descendents of Henry VIII's cronies after it was taken from the monasteries. More is owned by descendents of those that got wealthy through the slave trade. Given that land is essentially finite, my view is that the closest thing to ownership should be a form of stewardship with certain rights.
Been a long time since ya'll had a populist revolution.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#123Land Conservation Easements May Prove Misguided
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I volunteer with a regional land trust, and I think you're maybe misunderstanding the conservation easement process, or at least it's typical application. The typical process is: Private Landowner Decides they want to conserve their land. They work with a Land Trust to define, and put in place the restrictions of that conservation easement. Those typically restrict development (though the landowner can in some cases…
I understand all that perfectly fine. I didn't say that I would decrease public land, simply that these organizations should focus on making the conserved land public. Often times land is willed to the trust and then the trust sells it. This keeps it in private circulation when it could be made public access. Why would a private individual go through the legal risks of opening their land to the public? I highly doubt…
> "Why would a private individual go through the legal risks of opening their land to the public? I highly doubt these lands will become public access in the future as there's zero incentive for it, despite the joke you stated."
Because they're community-minded, and doing that aligns with their values?
Our small local land trust is currently in the final stages of two easements brought to us by private landowners who wanted to open their land to the public. One of them was I would say "community" oriented, in that their land had been informally open to the public, and they wanted to formalize that access, and use it to educate the public on the value of the ecosystems in place there.
The other is I would say is also community minded, but coming more from a place of principle in that they believe more people opening their land to public use is the right thing to do, and what we should be doing as a society.
It also helps that in our state, liability for public access is essentially zero, and we have very strong legal protections for landowners who open their land.
> Is there some choice in there? Not much if you want land.
Don't buy land that's encumbered by an easement? But it's gonna cost you more.
IDK about your friend's specific situation, but one of the big benefits of agricultural easements is that they significantly reduce the value of the land, allowing (perhaps) people like your friend to afford to buy farm land who wouldn't otherwise be able to.
In the area we operate, agricultural land has shot up from about $5K/acre, to $20K+/acre in less than a decade. At those prices, no family farmers can afford to buy farm land, and the only people who can farm are multi-generational farming families who bought land decades ago and haven't sold out yet, or large corporate farms.
But that price increase is being driven by developers who want to build houses. Take away that ability, and suddenly new farmers just starting out can afford to buy some land to farm on.
True, they don't have the freedom to turn around and sell that land to housing developers, but I think that hardly turns them into serfs.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I volunteer with a regional land trust, and I think you're maybe misunderstanding the conservation easement process, or at least it's typical application. The typical process is: Private Landowner Decides they want to conserve their land. They work with a Land Trust to define, and put in place the restrictions of that conservation easement. Those typically restrict development (though the landowner can in some cases…
Thanks for the detailed information. I am curious here: After an easement is added to the property, who has the ability to cancel the easement? Or is an easement non-removable forever?
I don't work on the legal side, but easements are generally designed to be permanent forever, with some caveats.
For example, I believe most conservation easements have some language that allows them to be essentially "moved" in certain circumstances. Say the city needed to build a road through an easement - than that easement could be exchanged for a similar parcel that was conserved in a similar manner nearby or similar.
But outside of that and similar narrow exceptions, conservation easements are generally designed to be forever.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#126No. Most places have 'immanent domain' type laws were the gov can essentially seize your property (forcing a sale) to give to someone else. A rich developer could see all that sweet sweet natural land and make a strong case (with lobbying, backroom deals, the usual) that it would be better used with a new condo or factory or strip mine and get it anyway.
Eminent Domain is nearly never used in the USA for private development, since Kelo v. City of New London. The City won in court, but lost massively in the court of public opinion. Many states passed laws restricting or prohibiting that type of eminent domain use following that case.
And even in that case, Kelo's land ended up not being used after all.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#127A cautionary tale from personal experience: My parents retired to a rural area and wanted to ensure that their area would remain a healthy old growth forest. They have been actively involved in a land trust that has successfully created large, continuous corridors throughout the area. One of their contributions was a continuous strip of about 20 acres. Their community has stitched these together to create wonderful c…
Well rural living and by extension preservation has to be joined with land ownership maps. First thing to check with a rural purchase must be what it borders. The more BLM/federal/state/county land, the more likely stuff like the above doesn’t happen. Same issue for building trusts.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technocratic neoliberal consumer capitalism isn't the only form of market economy, it's just the form that uses up the most land without regard to social and environmental impact because it is inherently focused on capital gains.
> uses up the most land How are you quantifying that?
It's self evident, endless and unchecked profit motives (neoliberalism) are divorced from considerations of resource sustainability or genuine social need, it will always use up more land than market economies with a more social minded approach.
If that isn't enough, loss of tree cover since 2001:
Neoliberal capitalist USA: 16% [1]
[1] https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/country/BRA
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics China: 6.7% [2]
[2] https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/country/CHN/
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#129You can protect land for habitat, and you can preserve existing stores of carbon, but any notions about nature being a carbon sink capable of offsetting fossil fuel use are best discarded. Take a look at UK energy consumption (it's mainly gas and oil these days, with most coal phased out): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom#/... The only carbon solution is figuring out how to not need fossil f…
While I agree that natural forests are unlikely to make a significant dent in CO2 through biological photosynthesis, that is not necessarily true for all plants. Kelp and Bamboo farming can do quite a lot more than the average tree with their extremely high growth rates. Just need to figure out what to do with the resulting product. Source: I'm in a working group looking at circular economies with net CO2 loss per cycle, using kelp for fuel and plastic production, scalable to Gigatonne levels.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#130A cautionary tale from personal experience: My parents retired to a rural area and wanted to ensure that their area would remain a healthy old growth forest. They have been actively involved in a land trust that has successfully created large, continuous corridors throughout the area. One of their contributions was a continuous strip of about 20 acres. Their community has stitched these together to create wonderful c…
> a developer bought up a large (~200 acre) tract neighboring them and the corridor. They immediately clearcut the whole thing
Make the land private and only allow access to conservation workers, volunteers and financially contributing members. The less joggers disrupting the ecosystem the better, and it's a way to fund more purchases of land, and encourage people to volunteer.