Dear HCN,
As I am accustomed to
seeing my name on bathroom walls and bulletin boards in certain
public buildings, the implication (from developer Milo McCowan)
that I support the dozing of Utah’s Rockville Bench merely adds
another zit to an already blemished reputation (HCN, 9/29/97). It
is not OK, however, to drop the name of Ed Abbey who is not
available to write this letter.
Friendship
aside, Ed would not have looked kindly on this desecration. I’m
sorry Jim Ruch and others concluded “conservation was a lost cause”
so they might as well turn a buck; industrial growth is, as Ed
Abbey once noted, the ideology of the cancer
cell.
The fact that former environmental
newspaper board members, eco-publishers and river-runners are
actively turning a dime on the bench development merely
demonstrates how faint-hearted most of us so-called
preservationists are: This conservation stuff is really neat until
it starts to cost real money. The banal ubiquitousness of human
greed is truly amazing. While Ed Abbey would never label friends
nor acquaintances “slimeballs,” their behavior merits no such
exception.
Doug
Peacock
Livingston, Montana
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline With friends like these ….
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