Many Vashon residents feel that because Glacier owns the property, went through the process and got its permit, there is nothing more to be said or done. We protesters are “sore losers,” some say.

The process was a sham. But let us, for the sake of argument, assume that the process was as rigorous and honest as current laws require. Current laws, even if obeyed, are not enough. We need to change our ways.

In a body of writings that is one of the sources of Western civilization, a recurring motif is this: Humans are in love with the works of their own hands and have no regard for the works of God. Those human works include physical structures like dams and seawalls and parking lots, as well as abstract creations like economic, social and political systems.

When those human works and laws degrade or destroy human life or ecosystems, they are disordered and need to be changed to bring them more into harmony with the works of God. “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts,” says the book of Common Prayer.

That is to say, we need to stop destroying the natural functioning of Puget Sound by the way we live and work on and around it. If we do not, we will eventually and inevitably have nothing left but a lifeless, polluted shipping canal.

Stopping a large industrial mine in the middle of a marine area that is preserving some of the last remaining eelgrass, herring spawning and habitat for young salmon is a reasonable place to draw a line in the (beach) sand.

Choose life.

— Jack Stewart

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