Who Owns the Land?

#12, April 21, 1999

Over one hundred million years ago, pieces of Sonoma County were emerging from fissures in the central Pacific. Quake by quake, this spreading oceanic plate jerked its way toward the shore, where it slid beneath the continental plate. As it plunged, city-sized chunks were scraped, squished, cooked and swirled into the melange of sandstones and schists we now call the Franciscan Complex. Thirty million years ago, the San Andreas fault began to inch the Tehachapi Mountain granite of Bodega Head on its 300 mile journey up the coast.

Around five million years back, volcanoes from Sonoma Mountain to St. Helena spewed lava and ash across the Franciscan foundation. Uplift along the coast created an inland sea, into which flowed erosion from the volcanic hills, depositing the sandstones which since have weathered into Sebastopol's orchard loam. Over the last few thousand years, deposits of alluvial adobe iced the ancient layer cake.

Stretch the history of the earth over a year, and during that year, Euro-Americans have been in Sonoma County for the last 3 tenths of a second.

The original Americans came here during the most recent ice age. Those who settled in Sonoma County created a way of life survived for scores of generations. The Pomo language had no word for famine. Unfortunately, the success of their culture did nothing to stop ethnic cleansing by the Mexicans early in the 1800s.

Once the Miwok and Pomo were out of the way, their land was handed out to the well-to-do friends of General Vallejo. Some of these Rancheros were the original California land scammers, adopting Mexican names and joining the Catholic church to qualify for the huge land grants. But their largesse was short-lived. American immigrant squatters carved up the Ranchos, stealing the land from the first-generation thieves.

Since then, the land has been bought, used, and sold in accordance with the laws of our culture. Many people made a living coaxing food and fiber from the land. Others lived and worked in towns. But very recently-- within the last tenth of a second of this planetary year-- a new class of land relationship evolved: speculation.

Unlike farming and homebuilding, real estate speculation produces nothing. But it adds a new element to California's history of land larceny, when sophisticated speculators get their political cronies to extend roads and other services at taxpayer expense, hiking up the value of the speculator's property. At its worst, when these taxpayers attempt to limit the development of that land, the speculator turns around and sues them for deprivation of property rights.

This rapacious approach to land development was clearly illustrated by a 1971 ad from the Sunday Real Estate section of the LA Times. It advised savvy investors to buy a patch of Palmdale desert, wait for the new airport, sell to the strip mall developers, and rake in the cash. The ad featured a lovely cross section drawing of a meadow, from root tips to flower tops. The tag line read: "Money Machine."

We all deserve a place to live with reasonable privacy, protection against trespassing and pollution, and a means of livelihood. We also need property laws that support sustainable land uses, like right-to-farm ordinances, and inheritance tax reductions for property owners who donate development rights. But that's not enough.

If we aspire to the former health and longevity of our local indigenous cultures, we need a new relationship with the land. If we want to be earth inhabitants and not earth tourists, we can begin by putting the message of Chief Seattle on the front page of our new General Plan, and print it at the top of every real estate document, and have it taught in every economics and geography class:

"The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. He did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Love the earth as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared, when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all."