In his “disappointment” and “shock” at not being elected, Kevin Flynn states, “It’s important to protect the lake...but there has to be a balance.” Well, we have to scratch our heads and wonder – what does he mean by ‘balance’ in this instance?
Most of us can readily relate to a teeter-totter, with equal weight distributed at each end, or our bank balances, with input equal to output (hopefully). In fact, ‘balance’ means just that: an equal distribution of weight or something, on either side of a two-fold process.
By ‘balance,’ It sounds like Mr. Flynn is referring to ‘development’ and ‘environmental protection.’ If so, I would be the first to agree that a balance is urgently needed in carrying out these two aspects of our culture. The problem is, environmental protection is definitely not even close to being equally distributed on one side of the cultural teeter-totter, with development almost completely weighing down the other. In fact, during the previous centuries of human history, environmental protection has only crept from being completely non-existent, to being barely minimal, albeit increasing (fortunately) today.
Perhaps developers mean that such a balance should really only start right now, at present, when a development or some other human preemption of natural systems is first proposed thereby ignoring the previous impacts of the whole development juggernaut over time. Unfortunately, impacts to, and preemptions of, natural systems do not begin anew at some fixed present time. They accumulate all too quickly.
No, I’m afraid that there is insufficient balance in current resource use and land allocation for development, compared to that for environmental protection. And when the weight is all but entirely on the development end of the teeter-totter, we can rightly call it an imbalance – and I look forward to its righting.
Tom Crowley