The Sucker's Bet; Destruction of the Prince George's Rural Tier

Does undeveloped land provide value? This is taken from a presentation that I give around the United States but not here in this county http://www.ipetrus.blogspot.com/. While others are trying to preserve or save or get back what we have, we blithely pave it over copying the mistakes of other people from other times thinking we have arrived. This thinking is like the person who rolls the dice at a craps table making the same bet as the previous earlier winning bet one roll later, a cousin of the sucker's bet.

"The services and value provided by undeveloped land and waters that people enjoy from healthy ecosystems are the unobtrusive foundation of daily life. Yet people often underestimate or simply ignore the values from these "ecosystem services" when making land-use decisions— only to realize later how difficult, expensive, and sometimes impossible it is to replicate services once they are lost. Vegetation and soil help reduce the amount of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere by capturing and storing it for use in producing roots, leaves and bark. Use of vegetation, shade structures, and other techniques to cool the air can reduce costs associated with urban heat islands. Vegetation provides cooling through shading and evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration alone can reduce peak summer temperatures by 2 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit. Around the country, polluted and contaminated stormwater runoff accounts for 70 percent of water pollution in urban areas and is the leading cause of poor water quality and the degradation of aquatic habitat.7 According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Wadable Streams Assessment (WSA) in 2006, 42 percent of U.S. stream miles are in poor condition compared to the best available reference sites in their ecological regions. The WSA found that the most widespread stressors across the country are nitrogen, phosphorus, excess sedimentation, and riparian disturbance(i.e., evidence of human disturbance in or alongside streams). When development results in an overall reduction in tree canopy cover, buildings are more exposed to both direct sunlight and wind. This exposure increases the demand for air conditioning in the summer and for heating in the winter." Copyright 2008, Sustainable Sites Initiative http://www.sustainablesites.org/ from my work on the technical subcommittee see also http://www.ipetrus.blogspot.com/

Exactly what kind of high end retail will want to be near the county trash station?