Takings
As the footprints of the human species on the Earth grow heavier and deeper, the tension between the Public good and the rights of Private enterprise increases. Government must be able to act to prevent harmful human activity. Businesses that expect taxpayers to insure them against losses from beneficial, protective regulations are shortsighted, rapacious, and mean.
This spring we learned that the European Union will ban all outdoor use of the class of pesticides known as neonicotiniods within six months. Neonics (for short) have been linked to bee kill events and a general reduction in pollinator fertility as well as significant harm to bird populations. While environmental activists in the US are advocating that we follow the EU’s example, de-regulatory ideology at the Federal level makes it unlikely at a national level. States, counties, and municipalities, however, are free(so far) to enact their own bans.
The use of these pesticides is standard practice in the cultivation of several food crops widely grown in Eastern Colorado: corn, soy, and sugar beets. None of these plants require bees or other insects as pollinators, being primarily wind-pollinated. Without pesticides all three crops are vulnerable to insect predation. As demand for pesticide free crops increases, more Colorado farmers are finding success with organic farming techniques. But over 90% of these principle cash crops on the plains are GMO and grown with pesticides.
On the other hand, fruit crops are also important to Colorado’s economy. Peaches, apples, cherries, plums, apricots and pears from the Western slope and melons from the Arkansas valley are bee-pollinated. More and more fruit-growers in Colorado are turning to organic farming. The cold winters and cool nights in Colorado, especially in the West where the most fruit is grown, limit the need for insecticides. Eliminating herbicides by removing weeds with a hoe is labor-intensive, but effective. Colorado locavores will pay a premium for organic fruit grown in state.
Reasonable debate or the horns of a dilemma?
Colorado farmers land on both sides of the pesticide debate. The fruit growers, nature-loving urban dwellers and the environmental lobby support the neonic ban. Growers of corn, soy, and beets argue against it on economic grounds.
But what happens if a different approach to preventing regulation is taken? For 2018, interest groups are proposing Constitutional Amendments that would force governing bodies that pass laws that devalue real property to compensate the property owner. Bills like this have failed several years running in the Colorado state legislature. So this year, they’re being run as ballot measures.
Now suppose one of these initiatives passes. How could Colorado then afford to ban neonic pesticides, even if positive proof emerged that pollinator populations would go extinct if use of the chemicals continued? Colorado cropland ideal for corn and soy grown with pesticides suddenly would lose value, because without pesticides (so the argument goes) the crop yields less, or has a less profitable use (silage or ethanol, not sweet corn). How could Colorado — revenue-constrained by its Constitution as it is — ever compensate the owners of the thousands upon thousands of acres of land that could no longer produce handsome sweet corn?
Will we lose our bees because of an economic dilemma?
The Ballot Initiatives
Here are the six ballot initiatives being proposed:
108. Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution requiring the government to award just compensation to owners of private property when a government law or regulation reduces the fair market value of the property?
109. Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution specifying that private property is damaged, requiring just compensation, when a government law or regulation reduces the fair market value of the property by ten percent or more?
[You can skip to the next subtitle if you feel like you get the idea!]
110. Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution concerning government taking of private property and, in connection therewith, declaring that property is damaged when a government law or regulation reduces the fair market value of the property by prohibiting or restricting uses that were allowed at the time the owner acquired title to the property, and requiring the compensation for the damage to equal the difference in the market value before and after the effective date of the law or regulation?
111. Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution concerning government taking of private property, and, in connection therewith, declaring that property is taken for public use whenever the implementation of any law or regulation causes a reduction in the fair market value of property for uses that were allowed at the time the property owner acquired title to the property?
112. Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution concerning government taking of private property and, in connection therewith, declaring that property is damaged when the enactment of a law, regulation, or regulatory condition limits or prevents the property from being used for a purpose that was allowed at the time the property owner acquired title, and requiring the compensation for the damage to equal the difference in the fair market value of the property before and after the effective date of the law, regulation, or regulatory condition?
113. Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution concerning government taking of private property, and, in connection therewith, declaring that property is taken for public use whenever the enactment of a law, regulation, or regulatory condition causes a reduction in the fair market value of the property for uses that were allowed at the time the property owner acquired title to the property?
The wolf in sheep’s clothing
They sound innocent, don’t they? Don’t they sound fair? If I have a couple of drinks, stay out late, get confused driving home, and smash my car into my neighbor’s garage door because I turned up the wrong drive, am I not liable for the damage? I must pay my neighbor for the garage door, and the car inside as well! Why should the rules be any different for government?
But it’s not the same at all, and the innocent-seeming language of these proposals was designed to deceive! If even one of these measures passed, it would upend the entire theory of government as protector of the people, and make it instead the slave of the ownership class.
Confession: we did a little deception of our own, by describing this problem in terms of farmers and bees. It’s easy to sympathize with growers of both soybeans and melons. Bees give us honey but corn gives us life. We need these things. We want them. We enjoy driving past the fields and orchards and seeing the plenty of the land. We know that farm economies are precarious.
How differently would you feel if you knew that these Constitutional amendments were proposed not by farmers or homeowners, but by Big Oil?
The truth comes out
Protect Colorado is a Colorado Political Committee formed in 2014. This spring Anadarko Petroleum made a lump sum donation to them of $423,750. Another consortium of smaller extraction companies has donated another $250,000. Protect Colorado is using the money to gather signatures hoping to get one or more of measures 108–113 onto the November 2018 ballot.
These ballot measures are there to defeat voter attempts to prevent the Oil and Gas Industry from drilling close to population centers. Colorado law already tilts the playing field toward the goal of oil and gas development, by preempting local regulation of extraction. If even one or two of these measures pass, the hands of state, county and municipal rule-makers will be completely tied. Big Oil will have free run of the state, with no restraints at all.
Science is real and Risk is life.
Now, maybe you live in Well(d) county, and you’re part of a mineral rights pool. That check from the drilling company comes in mighty handy. Or maybe you live in Morgan or Yuma and you don’t like to think about what it would be like trying to grow sugar beets without pesticides. Maybe these ballot initiatives look pretty good to you, because they seem to protect your financial interest.
But ultimately, they don’t. Because what they do is force government to ignore science, and we do that at our extreme peril. If the bees all die, we’ll have migrant workers out in the fields at Rocky Ford pollinating melon vines with an itty-bitty paintbrush. If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels soon, they’ll do it in such searing heat that the melons will die on the vine anyway.
Furthermore, if you stop and think about it, whether you lean left or right, these measures are against your ideology, to boot. These measures protect property and profit. And progressives favor placing the people and the planet above either one.
But conservative values say that self-reliance, individualism, and independence are the great virtues. They say that we each must accept life’s risks on our own, and deal with our own ups and downs. Don’t tax us to give health care to other people: If they can’t afford it they don’t deserve it.
Well, these ballot measures amount to free government insurance. For big business. For agribusiness. For Big Oil. Is it right to force states and cities to favor these giant interests over regular folks just trying to stand on their own two feet? Is is right to prevent government from doing what it does best — protect us from things we can’t avoid, like wars and weather and famine? From pollinator extinction? From global warming? Is the role of big government to prevent fat cats from having to take risks to get rich?
We don’t think so. The deceptive language of these initiatives makes them undeserving even of a vote. If you’re confronted by a (well-paid!) petitioner for any of initiatives 108–113, please don’t sign. Refuse, in the name of Freedom!
