NIMBYism: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
NIMBYism, “Not In My Back Yard”ism, is the local opposition to something perceived as undesirable in ones neighborhood. Environmentalists are regularly confronted with two conflicting narratives about NIMBYism. In one, the fearless locals fight to save their homes from mountain top removal in West Virginia or factory farming in Pennsylvania. In another selfish locals on Cape Cod oppose the construction of wind turbines, or Marylanders oppose light rail.
Local control, is not necessarily good. When local rule forces decision makers to confront the consequences of their actions, a respect for human rights can be enforced. However, local thinking can also inhibit the big solutions needed to address big problems. It can also threaten the needy and instill local conceptions of morality, as half way houses and planned parenthood clinics are often the targets of NIMBYism. A matrix of progressive “goodness” and public vs private ownership reveals the wide range of policies effected by NIMBYism both good and bad.
Organizations like the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) have sought to identify corporate personhood and federal control as the critical roadblocks in the path towards progressive change. While this does appear to be a silver bullet against Factory Farms and Big Box Retail, its worth wondering what its consequences might be.
What happens to renewable energy projects, adult stores, halfway houses, and planned parenthood clinics in this future? Certainly, for now, for profit factory farming and mining corporations have more legal resources to exert their corporate rights. Progressive must understand that NIMBYism is by its nature is good, bad, and ugly. A progressive future must empower those with the least power, often times that’s local communities, but sometimes it is the individual.
