By Frank Young 

Rodney King Solution

Rodney King was a black motorist, allegedly stopped and beaten by Los Angeles police officers in the spring of 1992.

After days or weeks of resulting riots, hundreds of hours of media coverage, national and international focus on America's criminal justice system, and calls for heads to roll in LA city politics, someone pointed a camera at Rodney King and asked him what he had to say about all the mayhem his arrest has spawned. Obviously disturbed at the civil acrimony his predicament had precipitated, his response included the phrase, "Can’t we all just get along?"

We see environmentalists and their adversaries expending so many resources on litigation, public image and public education, legislative efforts and many other fronts. In a slight corruption of Rodney King’s rhetorical question, I often find myself asking, "Can’t we get together on this?"

In recent months the Conservancy has been involved in trying (successfully) to affect the location of a proposed wind powered electricity generation facility. As originally proposed, the wind farm promised flashing strobe lights in the front door of Blackwater Falls State Park, and potentially could have excluded Blackwater Canyon from eligibility for National Park nomination.

Since the project was designed to develop "green" wind powered electricity generation, some folks, including the project’s developer, were willing to overlook the prospect of potential ruination of the State Park’s nighttime viewshed. But while we supported green power, some of us thought that there are some places just not acceptable for industrial projects, even a "wind farm." Although I’m very supportive of wind power, my thoughts were that if they can build this in front of this state park, they could build it anywhere.

We soon found ourselves at odds with the wind power developer who had courted us for support of the project. The developer almost took that support for granted in the beginning, and then we were at odds on the largest component of the large wind power project – its location.

As we developed our respective "dug in" positions at the state Public Service Commission, I kept thinking, "Can’t we get together on this?"

Are there other situations we should keep asking ourselves, "Can’t we get together on this?" And keep asking until we actually do decide to try to get together?

Do we so enjoy squabbling and litigating that we accept it as the only way to live? There must be a better way, sometimes.

Not all, perhaps not even most of our environmental issue battles are predisposed to settlement by good faith negotiations. But surely some are.

Enough, I think, that we should keep asking ourselves, and even ask our adversaries, "Can’t we get together on this?"