An inconvenient truth of Baldacci administration

Last month the Maine Democratic Party organized receptions before screenings of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the important new film on global warming, with Beth Nagusky of the Baldacci administration providing “a thorough briefing on the clear record of Maine Democrats on … energy and clean air” and “another speaker” recounting “the disastrous record of Republicans …”

While I applaud the MDP for recognizing the urgent emergency of global warming, I am concerned and suspicious of their motives. The Baldacci administration and Maine Department of Transportation are presently, as they have for years, spearheading the heavy industrial development of Sears Island as an unnecessary cargo port, precisely the order of government and corporate exploitation of wilderness the film identifies as the primary driving force behind global warming.

Corporate greed and environmental plunder are unique to no one political party, and global warming impacts everyone and everything. In “The Great Work,” Thomas Berry illuminates that the primal schism of our time is not that of Democrat or Republican, east or west, but is rather exploitation or preservation, development or conservation. Berry encapsulates the unanimous assessment of environmental science – that we are living in perilous times unprecedented in human history.

In 67 million years the Earth has never undergone anything comparable to the order of mass extinctions, toxicities in the biosphere, changes in climate and geological imbalance witnessed today. He warns that if we are to avert unspeakable disaster, environmental protection and sustainability must become the primary underlying principle for everything we do, and everything we teach our children.

In April, Time magazine reported the global warming emergency is not even decades away, but is “suddenly and unexpectedly upon us. The debate about global warming is now over, at least for rational people … Be worried. Be very worried.”

If the MDP and Baldacci administration believe they can use the global warming emergency to win votes, claiming to believe in the values expounded in this film, they should realize that unless the administration takes effective action to protect Sears Island from industrial development many former supporters will tirelessly work against their re-election. That is the inconvenient truth. Sorry.

The party cannot be unaware of the highly irregular and secretive ways the DOT continues to implement its dangerous strategies for Sears Island which are a travesty against any commitment to prevent global warming.

The DOT agenda for industrialization would serve to usher in the global warming the MDP professes it intends to prevent and is in direct conflict with the absolute mandates of the film they are promoting as emblematic of their beliefs. More important, the governor well knows the irreparable damage any industrial development would cause to Sears Island and Penobscot Bay and the havoc it would wreak to the environment of the Maine coast (not to mention the multi-billion dollar tourist industry).

According to the 1995 evaluation by the National Marine Fisheries Service (in concurrence with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the EPA), “The proposed Sears Island cargo terminal would be one of the most damaging coastal development projects to occur in New England since modern environmental standards went into effect in the 1970s.”

Sears Island is the largest uninhabited island on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, one of the last remaining areas of (relatively) untouched wilderness – now the most valuable resource on Earth. Its ecosystem is an irreplaceable estuary, where life itself is incubated, and protecting these last remaining estuaries, as scientists worldwide unanimously believe, is a fundamental prerequisite for planetary survival.

Science Magazine, in “the most comprehensive assessment of estuaries and coastal ecosystems ever conducted” (June 2006), underscored the “critical role of estuaries in human development” as the “source of ocean life, habitat for most commercial fish, resource for local economies, and buffer against natural disasters.”

In addition, Maine has more than 3,500 miles of shorefront, if one factors in the islands, of which only 25 to 30 miles are designated public access. Five miles of shoreline, publicly accessible from the mainland, are located on Sears Island! And, along the entire Maine coast there exists only 350 public access rights of way to the shore (Down East, June 2005).

The administration cannot legitimately claim any sensitivity to the plight of the lobster- and fisher-people, family quality of life, the tourist economy, or environmental protection while it is actively raping a pristine wilderness island owned by the people of Maine.

It is also troubling that Nagusky, director of the administration’s Energy Independence and Security, was the spokesperson for this film. In June 2004, four months after the Harpswell referendum defeated a local LNG assault, and the state’s highly secretive Sears Island LNG scenario was discovered and stalled by the public, Nagusky spoke for the governor at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission-LNG industry conference in New York. She reassured the LNG industry that the state was “… hoping that we will see a proposal between a developer and a community that supports the project in the next couple of months,” but declined to reveal the community or company because ” … these are confidential discussions” (Portland Press Herald, June 2004).

As it turned out, the administration’s new LNG approach, one which would assure community support, included assisting the ongoing campaign to persuade the Passamaquoddy Nation to site LNG on their sacred land. It also advanced the unconscionable tactics the DOT employs to impose industrialization on the residents around Sears Island, and we who live on the Penobscot Bay have been victims of this “bottoms-up” approach for more than two years with no end in sight.

Added together, it appears the administration’s solution to global warming will be to intensify efforts to shovel wilderness into the maw of corporate business interest. It refuses to rule out the perilous possibility that there will be LNG regassification in our future, as it declines to disclose its specific designs for Sears Island. Many “stakeholders” suspect industry continues to hover covertly behind the scenes.

After decades of battling the industrial development of Sears Island, it is time to assure that this world treasure is actively and fully protected. The Baldacci administration and Legislature must work with local communities to create the island as a world-class state park and-or recreational marine nature preserve. (UMaine has just acquired the Hutchinson Center in Belfast, opening wonderful new possibilities for vibrant research, enhanced eco-tourism, creative economic growth and world recognition.)

For this the governor would be remembered as a visionary as was Percival Baxter. He has the power to take bold action against planetary destruction by calling off the DOT and their industrial cronies and do what is right for the spiritual and economic well-being of the people of Maine. Together we can save Sears Island once and for all.

“Preservation for Planetary Survival” is a new paradigm. Searsport and the state of Maine would become an inspirational model of transformation, what is possible for communities everywhere. As John Muir once said: “For millions of years God has saved wilderness from tempests, floods, disease, earthquakes, and a thousand straining, leveling disasters. But He cannot save it from fools. Only the government can do that.”

Your move, governor.

Lorin Hollander is a world-renowned concert pianist, lecturer and educator. He has been actively involved in initiatives to preserve Sears Island for more than 35 years and is a member of the Sears Island Planning Initiative Steering Committee. For more on his work see www.lorinhollander.com.