climate

I saw a story on the public last night about a place in Mississippi called Turkey Creek, a low area not more than three miles from the Gulf where black families have lived since they were freed in the 1860's  In the face of a stream of proposals out of the local development officials and the usual brood of developers for a traffic bypass and development of recreational facilities-hotels, golf courses, condos, etc-which would fill in the wetlands and vastly increase the flooding risk for the community, all of which got the protesting homeowners labeled "dumb bastards" by the mayor and "whiners" by Governor Barbour, the situation seemed hopeless.

Then they began to get conservation easements in place and "historical place" designations for some of the houses, all pushed and sponsored by relatively well off environmentalists and preservationists and their groups.  By the end of the story, the pressures had eased somewhat on the community, just in time, as it turned out, for the BP oil spill disaster.

But I wonder, for those of us battling to keep small farms and farmers viable, if there is not a lesson here.  We have put forward the human story of these farms and communities for several generations now, to no avail.  Now we have another "farm crisis" which will once again result in fewer farmers.  Perhaps we need to make our arguments based upon the need for a certain number of people on the land to facilitate the proper movement of carbon mostly back to the soil, where so much of it originated.  Will the very real threat from climate destruction motivate change where simple exposition of the local human misery caused by our current approach to agriculture has failed?  Maybe the deteriorating climate threatens the right people, the powerful people?