I couldn’t believe it when I read it in the newspaper of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois where I lived before I moved to Utah. State government is closing a number of state parks, including Kickapoo State Park outside nearby Danville, to pay for their own fiscal incompetence. Residents of the area are fighting it but it’s probably a lost cause and indicative of the tragic and short-sighted attitude our so-called leaders have toward natural places and their contempt for the people who put them in power.
I used to go there often to hike, picnic and row my raft. It’s where I took my camera to practice videotaping wildlife, Nature, and work out in preparation for my grueling trip to Tibet and hike around Mount Kailash in 2005: the result being my documentary “Kora: Tibet and the Trail of Truth.” It was one of the few, remaining natural places in an area long decimated abd denuded by corporate and large-scale agriculture.
Actually, Kickapoo was far from being wild. It was reclaimed coal-mining ground that had been scarred and scraped beyond industrial use. So it was left to return to the Earth and the result was a strangely beautiful park made up of hills, forest, streams, ponds and other stuff Illinois never had much of and has even less of now. Kickapoo is ironically, unnatural.
But open or not, it’s a gleaming example of what humans can do to correct the environmental mistakes we’ve made. Sadly, it’s now also an example of how we just never learn.
Every time I see one of these stories I wonder “Why isn’t Utah getting any of this?” Google is dropping $10.25 million on a “breakthrough” geothermal technology which will be spent in Texas, California and other places that don’t have nearly the abundance of geothermal activity that Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Nevada do.
It’s clear that AS LONG AS THE SAME PEOPLE RUN UTAH, WE WILL CONTINUE TO LOSE BILLIONS TO COMPETITORS INVESTING IN AND DEVELOPING RENEWABLE ENERGY while we dish our money to the same old, wealthy fossil fuel companies who are going NOWHERE.
What do we have? Pie-in-the-sky oil shale, unproven gasification and a bunch of other maybe technologies that won’t do anything to bring the price of energy down or fight environmental degradation. What are our so-called leaders thinking- assuming thinking is, indeed, going on?
There was a character on Saturday Night Live back in the 1970s played brilliantly by Dan Aykroyd named Irwin Mainway. Mainway was a sleazy salesman who pitched dangerous and outrageously diabolical products such as “Bag O’ Glass” and “Teddy Chainsaw Bear” as being harmless and fun. But nothing is funnier than reality and Shell Oil has done Irwin Mainway one better (apparently hiring him to not only develop the product but write the script as well). Shell came out with a print ad in the United Kingdom claiming that their development of oil sands would “secure a profitable and SUSTAINABLE future.” I guess they either believe that nonsense or they thought no one would catch it.
The World Wildlife Federation did catch it and filed a complaint with the British organization overseeing advertising in the UK. They ruled that the ad is misleading and does not back up its environmental claims. In their defense, Shell quotes a 20-year-old report by some obscure ”World Commission of Something” that defines something as sustainable if it is ”development which meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Shell’s not allowed to run the ad anymore but claims it was only going to run it a short time anyway- in the UK. If they start running it in Utah or elsewhere in America, you’ve been warned. Just remember Irwin Mainway and it will seem a lot funnier instead of pathetic- which it is.
I confess: I water my lawn. But I also let it get a little brown and my water bill is below the national average. America’s and Utah’s obsession with grass has made our state the second highest water-users per person in the country. To what end? Our own vanity? With the spector of water simply running out here by 2020 and human-caused “drought” due to over-consumption already hurting America’s southeast and southwest, WHY DON’T WE JUST STOP IT?
Ideological pathology. Like those who cut down the final tree on Easter Island, who will be the last person to watch the final drop fall from the nozzle of their hose as it falls uselessly on a blade of outdoor carpeting?
It’s sad to see Yosemite in California, one of America’s premier national parks, threatened by fire. It was sad in 1988 when Yellowstone, our largest and most popular park, was similarly devastated. No matter that it was a human (shooting a gun) that touched off this blaze. It could’ve been lightning or a number of causes. The dry conditions due to persistent drought in the southwestern U.S., people building luxury cabins and towns too close to and actually in Yosemite, and too many people driving into and around the park have turned Yosemite into a massive tragedy no longer waiting to happen.
We should take this time to recognize humanity’s role in not only starting the fire but creating the conditions that led to it causing so much damage and threatening so much more. Forests burned millions of years before humans walked the Earth. It was part of the natural process forests need to replenish themselves and stay healthy. But because humans demand consistency and predictability from Nature, the natural processes of our planet including floods, storms, fires, earthquakes, eruptions, droughts, etc. become DISASTERS. The ultimate disaster is that without an awakening to the devastation we have caused and a reversal of our destruction, there will only be more disasters- with no one to blame but ourselves.
As a member of The Nature Conservancy, I’m really proud of the research our organization does to show not only how important maintaining our wild places is but how much damage and death is caused by encroachment of humans on our environment. This new study proves the harmful effects of air pollution on Nature, just in time to head off the attempt by the Bush Regime to allow the building of more coal-burning power plants next to wilderness areas and national parks. Of course, Bush’s people never read, listen to or follow even their own research results. This study will likely only be good in dsicouraging yet another disastrous policy mistake that will end up getting overturned by a federal court.
It’s curious when a new study produces evidence that all the bad things that will happen if we don’t change are happening already. That’s the case with the new study about Utah’s projected population growth, acclerated reliance on fossil-fuel burning vehicles and more roads. It says we need to spend more on mass transit and other pollution-mitigating infrastructure instead of the stuff we know will ultimately kill us or make life here intolerable. It all depends on the wording of the study, of course, and the stories in corporate media that follow.
It’s all related to the denial that most of the human race is engaging in right now over climate change, air and water pollution, oil and coal dependence, overpopulation, etc. The concept that we can go on forever doing exactly what we did 100 years ago is still deeply rooted in American culture, especially here in the western U.S. Ironically, resistance to change is actually more a characteristic of older, former imperial nations like England, France and Japan, not the United States. But in a dramatic reversal of attitudes, America now finds itself the stodgy, imperial old-timer and Europe and Japan the agents of change.
Funny how time, knowledge and experience help you stay alive- and how the lack of it helps you die young.
Ranchers and other nuts who successfully got grey wolves taken off the endangered species to allow hunting of the few that remain in the west used a dwindling elk herd as one of their primary justifications. Despite strong evidence to the contrary, the Bush Administration again ignored the facts and gave the anti-wolf people what they wanted. The irony is as great as the problem they’ve created.
Now, everyone sees as many of us have known for years that the anti-wolf forces were lying and the Bush Regime was (typically) stupid. Elk are dying from a disease caused by too many of them. Their population would be under control if wolves hadn’t been extirpated decades ago. The disease is spreading to the very ranch animals being “protected.” Without wolves, grizzlies and other predators, effectively wiped out by ranchers, bum legislation and development, the ecosystem is SNAFU and now we’ve got to come up with some other expensive and misguided plan to bail out the ranchers from a problem THEY CREATED. Your tax dollars at work.
A similar problem is occuring right now as well in Nevada with their wild horse herd. Too many of them means disease, environmental destruction caused by over-browsing and the invention of yet another stupid government program to bail out hunting groups and ranchers: this time, horse birth control. I’m not kidding.
The controversy over the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to stop taking applications for solar projects on federal land and take no action on the ones they have will not go away. Treehugger, a great eco-blog, is spurring on the discussion as the Bush Regimists take their final, extended summer vacations before going back to work under a new president who might actually care about America. Bottom line: no matter who takes over from Bush, the moratorium will be lifted because solar makes sense. It’s the Bush Administration and its relentless and unjustifiable protection of the oil, gas and coal industries that don’t.
Here in Maui, where I’ve been the past few days, the sun shines virtually all the time except for a few days when a storm blows through. The solar capabilities here are seemingly endless. But most hotels, stores, and buildings don’t have solar here. Why? In a word, developers. Most of the new construction here is homes and time-shares for people who don’t have to think about what kind of power they use because they’ve got enough money to afford anything they want. Most people on Maui don’t make enough to afford a new home or solar power. It’s really up to the developers and the government to something and finally they’re acting. Hawai’i now requires all new homes have solar water heaters. A step in the right direction. But it reveals the lack of foresight among builders, developers, real estate people and others who could help Hawai’i become a better place to live by implementing renewable energy, including wind, biomass and geothermal of which Hawai’i has plenty.
Instead, you have a state that is choking on high gas, power, transportation, housing and virtually everything as pollution, traffic, waste and overpopulation grow. If there was a place that needed to do something, Hawai’i is it. But the same could be said for just about every other sun-belt and western state including Utah. This is a start. But it will take a long time for governments and developers to break their old habits and do the right thing by their customers and the Earth. It’s an American problem. But we can’t wait for Bush or any other federal help. Like Hawai’i, the energy crisis is going to be solved state by state, city by city, house by house. And that, perhaps, is the best solution to not just our energy problem, but our federal government problem.
