Our fair city has lost an important breed? This has us wondering: Has the City of Santa Barbara caused our environmentalists to become extinct? Impossible, you say. We are home to the environmental movement! Not so fast. Notice the massive structures popping up all over the town. They are built property line to property line and to maximum height. At meetings, such as the Historic Landmarks Commission, the Architectural Board of Review and the City Council, we’ve seen no signs of environmentalists anywhere to push back on the consequences of these projects. These boards and commissions are stacked with developers’ lackeys. Overbuilding is a prophylactic to our water table, which must be refilled like a balloon to maintain capacity, lest supports beneath us crumble. Have they gone underground or have they deserted us? Rest assured, the faux environmentalists came out of the woodwork the weekend of April 27 at Alameda Park for food, music, booze and chackies during Earth Day, celebrating the idea of “green.” It’s a little like health, where everyone concedes its value while eating chips. Granted, some even biked to the park, as the streets were over-parked and the city lots full. Other than envirotainment, self-congratulatory recycling and the desire for all things green, let’s face reality: If it’s going to mean time out of our day, confrontation or real work, well, life is just too busy for that level of activity.
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