If you are persuaded by Aristotle’s idea that in small worlds we see the ordering of complex larger worlds — that the microcosm reflects the macrocosm — then you might want to pause to consider the momentous occasion of the official beginning of Chebeague Island’s independence on July 1, just a few days ahead of our national celebration of American independence.
Chebeague Island becomes the 493rd (or so) town in Maine — eleven years after Long Island in Casco Bay officially celebrated its independence as the 495th town in Maine. (The “or so” caveat above results from the fact that while a new town very occasionally is born, very small towns, especially in remote areas of northern Maine more frequently “de-organize” to become plantations because there are not enough people or enough tax dollars to run the increasingly complex mechanics of local government. State agencies instead take over. Thus, the exact number of small towns in Maine changes, although mostly by subtraction.)
What does Chebeague Island independence reveal to the rest of us about the state of our democracy? First, it would be well to take a moment to show our respect by learning how to pronounce the new town’s name accurately — it’s sh-BIG (accent on the second syllable with a short “I” sound, rather than sh-BEEG or CH-beeg or some other variant). This is important; correct pronunciation means we are paying enough attention to respect a community’s self-definition. And while we’re at it, let’s remember that Isle au Haut is “I’ll -a hoe” not “Eel a hoe.”
Second, Chebeague’s independence reveals that self-government (let’s call it freedom for short) is neither simple nor cheap. At Chebeague’s first town meeting in history on July 1, voters are to consider 110 warrant articles, hire 31 town officials and elect ten new town office-holders. And that’s just to get started. Thankfully, islanders will assume many of these paid positions, revealing another important lesson, which is that recycling tax dollars within a community helps sustain small towns — a strategy not lost on islanders.
Third, it is hard to conceive how Chebeague’s independence could have been accomplished without the support, and the continuing efforts, of the Town Council of Cumberland. The Town Council agreed to assist Chebeague’s transition to full independence by continuing to prepare the island’s tax bills for the current fiscal year (on a paid hourly basis) and to issue a host of other permits until all of the many gears of local government can be shifted fluidly, if not automatically, by islanders in 2008. Of course, Cumberland is a wealthy town and perhaps could therefore more easily take the high road, than say, a fiscally stressed City Council of Portland, which continues to begrudge any independence discussions with Peaks Island. Even though none of us chooses our relatives, the history lesson here is that in a conflict over independence, it is better to confront a rich uncle than a tight-fisted King George.
Finally, the heroic volunteer effort already expended by Chebeague’s Transition Committee is just the beginning of the mostly unpaid, volunteer energy that will now be required by all islanders to tend their new freedom. If nearby Long Island’s case is any example, whole new groups of leaders will emerge from the island ranks from unexpected places, and citizen engagement in island affairs will deepen in the future. Tending the island victory garden will require many, many thousands of hours per year from many hands to prevent a rank and un-weeded garden from choking the harvest.
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I have continued to try to keep abreast of climate change science. What I can report from the recent Comer Fellows Program in Abrupt Climate Change symposium, which I attended last month, is that abrupt climate changes — both warmings and coolings — have occurred quite regularly during the past two million years without any help from humans. The records are now quite clear that these climatic shifts are global in scope and much more rapid than most scientists had assumed — until the Greenland ice core records of the mid 1990s were carefully deciphered and their findings then replicated from other cores, coral reef records and cave stalactite rings from around the world including Antarctica, New Zealand, China etc. For the past 50-60 years climate scientists have postulated that these cycles are related to relatively minor fluctuations in the earth’s solar orbit–predicted by an obscure Yugoslavian mathematician named Milan Milankovic in the 1940s but now directly observed and measured in tenths of a watt per acre differences. The differences, when added up over large surfaces, can explain the dramatic pre-civilization climate changes that affected people like the Vikings in Greenland, the Anasazi in the American Southwest, the Medieval warming, etc.
The Milankovic cycle predicts that we should be entering a cooling phase. The fact that the global climate is clearly warming either means that no one really understands the solar orbital influences on climate (a distinct possibility) or that the effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere may be overriding the natural cycle — another possibility. What the Institute had been arguing in ocean policy for a decade is that if we don’t understand enough about the marine environment to sort out natural fluctuations from the human effects of fishing pressure, we should apply the precautionary principle to our policies — i.e. reduce fishing pressure (carefully and thoughtfully) until we know more. Shouldn’t the same principle be applied — carefully and thoughtfully — to the much larger questions of abrupt climate change where the stakes are even higher?
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.