We had a bad week at our house because our three year old Pomeranian rescue suddenly had a first-time seizure, which rapidly became cluster seizures; and, on Tuesday we had to rush her to the emergency vet in Williston.

They stabelized her, identified her condition as idiopathic epilepsy, and got her started on the regime that will allow her to live a relatively normal life hereafter.  

When it comes to our families and our pets, we’re pretty good at accepting that, following a health crisis, some permanent changes must be adopted immediately in order to avoid a repeat or escalation of the crisis. A single life-threatening incident, coming out of the blue, is usually sufficient to get us on the right track.

Why does this proactive instinct not extend to our response to environmental crisis?

In the aftermath of the record twister that leveled Moore, Oklahoma we are learning that few buildings in the community provide so much as an above-ground “safe room,” let alone a basement, for inhabitants to wait out the storm. This, despite the fact that this little town lies squarely in a region known as “Tornado Alley.”

That deficiency extends even to the schools, one of which collapsed in the storm, killing seven children.

Given the storm history of the area, wouldn’t you think the local permit body would proactively require, not “recommend,” a minimum amount of protection in each new build?   But no; we are told Oklahomans are so hostile to the role of government in their lives that they will not tolerate such regulation.  

It is only when you read between the lines that it becomes clear that cost is the real driver here:

“When you look at the flat land, and the amount it would cost to excavate and remove the dirt, the cost of the foundation to build a basement just adds a substantial amount to the cost of a new home,” Mr. McCarty (a local builder) said.

Before we get to feeling too superior to Oklahoma in the regulatory proaction department, we need only look back to Hurricane Irene and Governor Shumlin’s sanguine order to disregard Vermont’s own stream protection rules in the aftermath of the storm.  The very purpose of those rules was to minimize the risk of similar events unleashing even worse outcomes on both the environment and the population.  

And here we are, poised once again at the beginning of an active storm season, having made relatively little progress toward adopting stricter protocols for storm mitigation; and having lessened the likelihood that existing rules will be enforced, by underfunding the work of the Agency of Natural Resources.

The new reality is that, if we are to cope with growing climate disturbance and the costly environmental and human impacts that come in its wake, we must invest even more money in the process, and support regulatory initiative as the positive it is for a sustainable future. The alternative is a future little different from the present plight of Moore, OK.

Before we enroll too enthusiastically in the current meme, that regulation in Vermont should be “streamlined;” let’s devote a little more concern to effective enforcement.

There certainly should be an ongoing effort to avoid redundancy and inefficiency in the state’s regulatory systems.

However, the commitment should not be to making developers’ jobs easier, but rather to ensuring that Vermont’s natural environment will continue to support a healthy ecosystem (including our human population) into the distant future.  It should not be to favor short-term business interests over the science of long-range sustainability.

Too much government intervention?  Just ask those homeless Oklahomans whether they wouldn’t appreciate a little more about now.