What's the problem? A simple question, yet one that is essential to resolving the environmental crises which has been staring us in the face for decades.

What's the problem? We are spewing toxins into our air, polluting our aquifers, rivers, lakes, and oceans, important habitats are disappearing, the atmosphere is warming to the point we have a global crises of enormous magnitude; our ice caps are melting, our farmland, fields and forests are being transformed into one unit per acre subdivisions, which require more roads, more cars, more energy to heat and cool them.

When we look at this abbreviated list of problems it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Most people, (not ABCO members), simply sigh and go about their daily lives, feeling powerless to achieve any degree of success.

Others take on a piece of the problem, such as working to preserve open space, fighting to protect endangered species, or to promote a better energy policy. All of these issues are enormously important. However, they are not central, they are not basic, and they will not put us on the path to environmental health. In fact some argue that attacking the problem in a piecemeal fashion has only compounded the problem.

"Unaware of what we have done or its order of magnitude, we seek to remedy the situation by altering our ways of acting on some minor scale, by recycling, by diminishing our use of energy, by limiting our use of automobiles, by fewer development projects. The difficulty is that we do these things, not primarily to cease our plundering of the Earth in its basic resources, but to make possible continuation of our plundering industrial life patterns by mitigating the consequences.² Thomas Berry

If these tenets of environmental stewardship are defined as peripheral issues which allow for the 'continuation of our plundering' what is the central issue? What¹s the problem? Or more accurately what is the central or basic issue which must be addressed?

In his book, Ecocities, Richard Register describes the central problem as the car/sprawl/freeway/oil complex, a type of economy which reproduces itself.

"The car/sprawl/freeway/oil complex is destroying habitat, and directly and indirectly destroying animals and plants. Repetitive, small, car-dependent buildings scattered over vast areas, often made of wood from shrinking forests, not only require enormous quantities of gasoline to maintain, but share walls with no one and lose their energy of heating or cooling to the surrounding air after a single use."

Register refers to the car/sprawl/freeway/oil complex as the four headed monster. It is this monster that has nailed us, as if to a cross, to the most dangerous, and destructive activity of all, driving. Cars kill over a half million people a year, injures 10 million others, the toxins which spew out of our tail pipes are now the largest contributors to air pollutants. Cars require the destruction of large areas of open space, for roads, and parking areas. Cars permit, and indeed encourage the spreading out of development patterns. If we wish to make a dent in the environmental crises which confronts, us we need to examine not a part of the problem, but the basic structure of the human environment.

Ecology, after all, is the study of the whole. The relationship between and interactions among organisms. It is the study of relationships, relationships to habitats and other organisms.

The basic structure of human habitation has increasingly become the suburban model. In 1960 one third of the people of the U.S. lived in cities, one third in suburbs, and one third in the country. By the 1990¹s over half of the citizens of the U.S. lived in suburbs. Following WW II the most prevalent suburban model has been suburban sprawl.

What is suburban sprawl? It is the scattering of human habitation over large areas. The separation of home, (usually segregated into clusters of equal cost) from shopping , and workplaces. It is the physical separation of the community. It is the components of community scattered and thrown to the winds. Such scattering requires, that destructive activity, driving.

Is this destructive form of human habitation a mistake? Unfortunately not. Suburban sprawl is the direct result of zoning and subdivision ordinances administered by planning departments.

To bring down the car/sprawl/freeway/oil complex, or the four headed monster, we must alter the pattern of human development. Sprawl must become public enemy number one. All of us, environmentalists, civics, special interest groups such as those concerned with the provision of affordable housing, must seek to center development. We must strive to insure that zoning codes not only encourage but require centering. We must insure that our elected officials understand that reduction of suburban sprawl is our highest priority. We must insure that new legislation like the Suffolk County Bond Act with its component of TDRs require that receiving zones be located in pedestrian oriented community centers. To do less is to... ³to make possible the continuation of our plundering industrial life patterns... "