Saith the Watauga Democrat:

Blue Ridge Conservancy recently praised a bipartisan congressional vote that makes permanent a federal tax incentive supporting land conservation.

I’m not so thrilled. I love nature and miss having the time and money to spend five days at a time just wandering around in the middle of nowhere. However, at least three reasons not to be happy come to mind:

  1. We are told there are over 1100 land trusts supporting the act. That means there are a lot of conservation areas. Although history is still in the making, we get the sense that historical designations these days are scraping the bottom for relevance in order to get a tax break – and not the kind of thing for which dad will haul the kids cross-country to check off a bucket list. Since things like creating a Grand Canyon (if you lean more toward gradualism than catastrophism) move slower than great moments in history, there is a great chance that many of the most spectacular feats of nature are already conserved, too.
  2. Since conservation will now be in perpetuity, what if disasters do happen? What if an earthquake runs through a forest, or, more likely according to today’s experts, a tidal wave engulfs the Eastern Seaboard in perpetuity. Will the folks still reap tax credits for not building on their underwater wetlands?
  3. And, speaking of being underwater, the economy continues to struggle as economics experts try to create prosperity by moving numbers around electronically. I think we’d do better to go back to a Smithian notion of creating wealth by adding genius and labor to raw materials. Conservation easements take raw materials off limits, creating scarcity, you know the drill . . .