Page 6 RAIN July/August 1984 The medieval past is honored at the Cathedral, and so . is the dawn of the solar age. We have proposed that the Cathedral be solar heated, as the cost of heating it is growing rapidly. Our idea is to replace the copper sheathing on the southern face of the existing six-hun- dred-foot-long roof with glass. Such a rooftop greenhouse is to trap warm air which would be ducted down into the subterranean vaults of the Cathedral for later use in heating. Our plan also calls for the interior of the roof areas to be used for the mass propagation of fruit, nut, and ornamental trees, which could be used by millions to help reforest New York. The architect David Sellers grafted our ideas onto a new architectural form for the Cathedral. He has proposed that the south transept, which was never built, be redesigned as a Gothic bioshelter. It is named the Rene Dubos bioshelter, honoring a man who fused Christian tradition and ecological thought. David Sellers designed the south transept with a glazed roof through which solar heat is ducted to heat the nave. Sellers' designs place solar hot water collectors in the existing south roof to heat water to be stored in a vast chamber under the crossing. In this way summer sun would be used for winter heating. The bioshelter design expresses a re- emerging relationship between Christianity and ecology. The chapel contains a garden comprised of an ecosystem specifically adapted to the Cathedral's space and climate. As the stones are being cut for these towers, under construction again after a fifty-year lull, St. John the Divine grows daily closer to its own idea of a Cathedral. It will be a statement in stone embracing past and future, serving the people of the Diocese of New York and of the world. □ □ © 1984 Naiuy lack falci ami lohii Toiiii ACCESS: Land “My Farm is Safe Forever," by Noel Perrin, Country Journal, April 1984, $2.50 from: Country Journal 205 Main Street Brattleboro, VT 05301 Every time I go back to New Jersey, I discover another shopping center or bridge or condominium where before there had been fields or woods. Well, development is not inevitable. If you own rural land, and you'd rather see it used as farm or woodlot than as a parking lot in years to come, you probably can protect it—and make money in the process. Noel Perrin gave his Vermont town development rights to his 90 acres, and thereby earned a $27,800 deduction on his income tax (the difference between the land's value as farmland and its value as developed land). The immediate benefit was a lower annual tax rate, and he retained every right of ownership aside from development rights; he could even sell the property. Forty states have some legal protection strategy for open land. (Vermont's version is called the Current-Use Assessment Program.) In most cases, the town does not lose tax revenue on the land because the state makes up the difference in tax revenues. In the long run, land protection holds down your neighbor's taxes, too, since the town saves money on schools, roads, and services. In Suffolk County, Long Island, the county raised $60 million to buy development rights on about 12,000 acres of farmland—and the county expected to save $60 million in services that wouldn't have to be provided. Development is costly in other ways, too. Perrin discovered that in the last decade, Orange County, Vermont, has lost 153 farms to development. Having spent 20 years restoring his land "to a beautiful and moderately productive farm, [Perrin] didn't relish the idea of bulldozers leveling [his] carefully rebuilt stone walls or black-toppers advancing into the orchard." Productive land is a precious resource. This article can point you toward strategies for keeping j/o«r land safe forever. —TK Sacred Cows at the Public Trough, by Denzel and Nancy Ferguson, 1983, 250 pp., $8.95 from: Maverick Publications Drawer 5007 Bend, OR 97708 The adventures oflhe American cowboy have been immortalized in countless late- night westerns and perpetuated on drugstore bookshelves. Blinded by this romanticized version of history, few Americans realize the damage the cattlemen have caused and continue to cause in public lands of the arid west. As former managers of the Malheur Field Station in Southeast Oregon's Malheur Wildlife Refuge, Denzel and Nancy Ferguson have observed the declines in range productivity, increased soil erosion and desertification, and degradation of wildlife habitat that greedy and shortsighted western stockmen have brought on through overgrazing. In this book, the Fergusons detail how a privileged minority is allowed to monopolize the use of public lands for private gain, while extracting a hefty subsidy for range "improvements" from an unconcerned and uninvolved public. They relate the ecological devastation that occurs when the carrying capacity of the land is ignored. Sacred Cows at the Public Trough is an important book for anyone concerned about wildlife, desertification, and erosion in the public lands of the West. —SM
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