It wasn’t exactly how Kati Giblin imagined her first visit to the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors would go.
The Calaveras High School senior, president of the Earth Club, came to speak about an Earth Day resolution declaring April 15 through 22 as Earth Week. The resolution was written by the club’s adviser, Jim Pesout, and presented by former Earth Club co-adviser Supervisor Darren Spellman, and contained the dreaded s-word – sustainability.
“The only thing we thought would be controversial was having a whole week, and we thought we had a pretty good reason for that,” Giblin said after the meeting.
Giblin and fellow student Cierra Allan, 15, told the board about their love of nature and their community, and all the activities the club had planned for Earth Week. The girls were stunned as the discussion turned from Earth Day to an hour-long debate on socialism and the United Nations.
The resolution eventually passed 3-2, with Supervisors Tom Tryon and Gary Tofanelli voting no.
Tryon got the ball rolling with his opposition, taking issue with not only sustainability but another passage in in the resolution discussing a commitment to a “peaceful, just and sustainable world.”
Tryon said that the use of the word “just” referred to environmental justice, which he couldn’t support, that climate change was not tied to human activities and that sustainability had become a synonym for “economic stagnation.”
“The economic system that gives you the most efficient use of resources is capitalism. The economic system that gives you the least efficient use of resources is Marxism. If you want to see waste, let the government do it,” Tryon said.
Giblin said she was nervous, but didn’t hesitate to tell a supervisor who has served on the board since before she was born in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t there to talk about politics or economics.
“Maybe capitalism does bring about sustainability, but either way you’re admitting that sustainability is a good thing,” Giblin said. She added that the Earth Club has no “particular political leaning.”
The effort was mainly opposed by a number of individuals involved with the local Tea Party movement.
Al Segalla, president of the Calaveras County Taxpayers Association, recalled his boyhood “indoctrination” to the virtues of the United Nations and said something similar was happening to local youth. He claimed that Earth Day and sustainability were efforts by “a highly organized, highly financed new world order. A socialized government.”
Peter Racz of the Gold Country Patriots pitied the girls for their false education on the climate change “fraud.”
“I agree we should look out for our environment, and No. 1 is the human being,” Racz said. “I feel sorry for the girls because they are misled.”
Many more spoke in support of the Earth Club students and their project, including Catherine Lambie, executive director of the Blue Mountain Coalition for Youth and Families in West Point.
“I don’t know about Earth Day being organized by a socialist organization, but I can tell you that in Calaveras County we’re the organizers. We’re not a socialist organization.”
Rail Road Flat resident Holly Mines added that the repeated assertions of a UN conspiracy were losing their effectiveness.
“When people constantly get up and attribute every activity to some international conspiracy, I just can’t buy it. ... (The girls) weren’t trying to address capitalism or socialism or the UN or anything like that.”
Supervisor Steve Wilensky – who wasn’t involved with the resolution but was nonetheless called out as being “up to his eyeballs” in UN-promoting agencies – stepped in to apologize to Giblin and Allan.
“I’ll bet the two of you are pretty surprised with what the adults are doing with your message, and I’d like to express my sympathies with your predicament. But the truth of the matter is we are a society that is riven by differences in approach on environmental issues or sustainability.”
“These kids have been working for a number of years on a variety of nefarious projects undermining the authority of national government. They include picking up trash at their high school,” as well as starting one of the most effective recycling programs in the county.
Giblin said that she had intended sustainable to mean “continuing our current lifestyle or improving it.”
“I like that so many people stuck up for us – that was really cool.”
Ann Pesout helps out with the club and accompanied the students to the meeting.
“I was surprised at the leap from keeping our Earth going to an international UN takeover,” she said, adding that she was proud of how the girls handled it. “I thought they did a fabulous job.”
Contact Brionna Friedrich at brionna@calaverasenterprise.com.
Students spark more 'sustainability' debate
By Brionna Friedrich
Posted: Friday, April 15, 2011 12:45 PM CDT
