permaculture

[Larry London <london@metalab.unc.edu>]

Rampaging Rustics! 
By David Ivins 

>From the New York Times

In case you city dwellers and suburbanites haven't noticed, be warned: the
countryside is slowly creeping up on you. Like a rapidly growing weed that
smothers everything in its path, rural areas are encroaching on our cities
and
suburbs, and no one -- not our elected officials, public interest groups
or
citizens -- is doing anything to stop this rural sprawl. 
In countless confrontations, rural extremists are preventing businesses
from
building industrial parks, shopping malls, condominiums, single-family
homes,
theme parks, airports and sports arenas. They are even fighting the
construction of new highways! What would the country be without the
network of
freeways and parkways linking our cities, suburbs, shopping malls, theme
parks
and sports arenas? 
Rural sprawl began quietly with the infiltration, in ever-increasing
numbers,
of wildlife -- squirrels, rabbits, songbirds and other small, cuddly,
apparently innocuous creatures -- into our suburbs and the fringes of our
major
cities. Now it seems that these small animals were only the advance guard
of a
cunningly planned invasion that also includes deer, coyotes, beavers,
mountain
lions, bears and other despoilers of our cherished suburban and urban
habitats.

Areas that otherwise would be given over to job creation and highly
profitable
logging, strip mining and oil drilling are being expropriated by wild
animals,
which are inherently valueless since they contribute nothing to our
economy.
Once these beasts establish themselves, shielded by hellbent
wildlife-protection groups and misguided politicians from Al Gore to
Christie
Todd Whitman, they can never be dislodged. 
But these animals are only the unwitting servants of the quaint-seeming
"country folk" whose diabolical plan is to eradicate or make unlivable our
suburbs and cities by covering our streets, sidewalks and highways with
grass,
shrubbery and trees. They want to inundate shopping malls and sports
arenas
with lakes, ponds and streams; replace our condo developments with
"picturesque" villages and hamlets and our suburban tract homes with
drafty,
old-fashioned farmhouses. 
The ultimate goal of these fanatical rustics is to return all of us to
lives of
unsophisticated rural primitivism. Is this the kind of life we want to
lead?
Fight rural sprawl now, before it's too late! 
David Ivins is a freelance writer. 
Copyright 1999 The New York Times 2/25/99 




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