The (May
12) issue of High Country News is just
pure fodder for cultural criticism of the New West. “Boom! Boom!”
posits a clash of distinct economies without even acknowledging the
direct link between the two, and suggests the amenities economy is
somehow better for the environment. Go back and read your Dec. 25,
2006, cover story, “Confessions of a Methane Floozy” by Hannah
Nordhaus, and get real. My town of Flagstaff could be the poster
child for the amenities economy, with none of the gas wells, and
besides having all the same economic woes, we’ve lost our clear
view of the mountain just outside of town. Yeah, that’s right, loss
of air quality caused by more and more people and by climate
change, in turn caused by more and more people. Why do rational
people have such a hard time admitting that?
Add to that
the desperate ideas of environmental law professor Mary C. Wood in
“Climate Revolutionary,” who hopes that our legal system, itself a
reflection of our values that consistently elevate private
interests over those of the public, could somehow change who we are
overnight. What a fabulous example of the death of
environmentalism. I’ve got news for the professionals: Global
warming is a moral issue, not a legal one.
How about the
effectiveness of Ron Gillett, who wants all the wolves removed from
Idaho? Human economic and recreational values are once again
trumping nature, this time because the urban political base of wolf
reintroduction has no credibility in the real wild.
And
finally, Shane Bondi’s essay, “Coffeepots and climate,” shows
educated, urban sensibility (like mine), also desperate, hoping to
“sever some of the ties (we) have to global warming” with wind
power. Do the math on how many square miles of wind farms it would
take to power all of us. I’ll remember that issue better as “Doom!
Doom!”
Doug Meyer
Flagstaff,
Arizona
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Doom! Doom!.
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