Joshua Hart reports: "If the California Coastal Commission’s August 10 decision is any indication, no endangered species, viewshed, or habitat is safe from a Distributed Antenna System (DAS) 4G cell tower popping up right next door. It’s open season, as smart phone addictions drive a kind of selective blindness toward wireless damage to life itself.

"Though dozens of nearby residents had sent letters of opposition to the Commission, far outweighing those in support, and despite the project clearly violating several key sections of the Coastal Act and Local Coastal Plan, the Commission approved the project at the direction of the wireless industry, seemingly irritated by the large number of people who showed up to speak and defend Big Basin State Park and Santa Cruz County’s pristine North Coast.

"Although a wide range of problems with the project were brought to light by letters to the commission, as well as public testimony, the Commissioners seemed in a daze of apathy brought on- they said- by the 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act (FTA) which prohibits local and state governments from rejecting cell infrastructure based on “environmental effects” which has also been interpreted as meaning human health.

"Those groups who are meant to protect remaining wilderness areas have grown silent, awkward, in denial. We cannot count on the traditional defenders of nature to protect us from the threats of the 21st century. We need to establish new forms of resistance if we are to have any chance at protecting what remains- or even turning the tide on the decline of our liberties, our quality of life, and our biological diversity."

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