{"id":1619,"date":"2010-02-17T09:20:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T13:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/02\/17\/should-the-north-country-be-a-working-landscape-or-a-scenic-preserve\/"},"modified":"2010-02-17T09:20:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T13:20:00","slug":"should-the-north-country-be-a-working-landscape-or-a-scenic-preserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/02\/17\/should-the-north-country-be-a-working-landscape-or-a-scenic-preserve\/","title":{"rendered":"Should the North Country be a working landscape or a scenic preserve?"},"content":{"rendered":"

NCPR’s David Sommerstein produced a fascinating piece<\/a> for this morning’s broadcast on the battle over new wind farms in the North Country.<\/p>\n

Environmental impacts — on birds and bats, for example — are a factor in this debate. <\/p>\n

But increasingly, Americans are conflicted over what our iconic rural landscapes should look like.<\/p>\n

Not so long ago, we took it for granted that rural areas would be defined by “working” landscapes.<\/p>\n

Rivers would be dammed for power. Forests would be cleared for farming. Mountains would literally be moved to uncover natural resources. <\/p>\n

It was a given that scenic views would be shaped, at least in part, by industrial structures — everything from silos and barns to mills and smokestacks.<\/p>\n

But since WW 2, rural America has been steadily de-industrialized. <\/p>\n

After the 1950s, a huge amount of economic development outside of cities and suburbs has come in the form of tourism and vacation home construction.<\/p>\n

This “colonization” of small towns has meant an influx of people who expect the rural landscape to remain static.<\/p>\n

Put bluntly, our communities have to keep matching the Norman Rockwell-agrarian vision that city folks see in television and movies.<\/p>\n

Taken to an extreme, small towns become museum pieces, snow globe preserves.<\/p>\n

But that nostalgia (and yes, the economic advantages that come with it) is being challenged.<\/p>\n

We’re beginning to see the re-industrialization of places like the North Country.<\/p>\n

For the first time in a generation, small towns in our part of the world have the opportunity to produce a high-value industrial product that people want to buy: namely, energy.<\/p>\n

As world oil supplies dwindle, biomass, wind, nuclear, and hydro generation could emerge as the main economic engines driving rural America, perhaps even equaling agriculture in Rural Domestic Product.<\/p>\n

So here’s the question:<\/p>\n

Can we realize all (or at least some) of that potential without wrecking the very real aesthetic values of our region?<\/p>\n

Obviously, it will be a balancing act. <\/p>\n

But it will also likely emerge as a huge source of conflict. <\/p>\n

Many local residents will yearn for the high-quality jobs and opportunities that come with green energy development.<\/p>\n

But many visitors and second homeowners will likely see this evolution of rural viewscapes as the despoiling of something timeless.<\/p>\n

Ironically, many of the things those visitors now take for granted — quaint farms, dammed lakes for boating, scenic railroads — are the product of a past industrial age.<\/p>\n

Maybe someday those wind farms will be viewed as another iconic element of the North Country’s landscape, no more “out of place” than big red barns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NCPR’s David Sommerstein produced a fascinating piece for this morning’s broadcast on the battle over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}