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Letter: Better a panicked greenie than a complacent scorched-earther

  

Several letters to the editor of late are notable for a similarity in living in, and representing philosophies of the past; Bodies of belief from a world, not bulging with shifting populations endless war and diminishing resources. One, the perspective of Floyd Diemoz, regarding the Parachute benzene leak, seems best characterized by the old expression “the solution to pollution is dilution.” This canard cannot continue to be the justification for a cavalier attitude toward a release of even small amounts of poisons and other substances. Who knew that we would ever pump a dangerous, climate-altering amount of carbon dioxide into the air, a fact now understood by most? We live on a beautiful, blue, finite planet which is in the process of teaching us about limits to things we have been able to do in the past, without thinking.

Then there is another argument from a past era of wide open spaces and ever-expanding economies put forth by Dick Prosence from Meeker. I hesitate to keep using this metaphor but, only cancer continues to grow without limits, until it kills its host. If industry were unshackled from environmental regulation and the anemic Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, expanding business and housing developments and population, etc., would consume or foul every natural resource we need to survive. (The Clear Water/Air Acts are rendered anemic because the Bush/Cheney administration exempted the biggest polluters, extraction industries.) To have a livable future we must develop new sources of energy and place more, not less, regulation on petroleum-based resource extraction and consumption. There are worse things than an expensive gallon of gas. This is the only way to move toward Mr. Prosence’s “higher standard of living for all our citizens,” rather than a higher standard of living for oil and gas economy stakeholders.

Cooperation will need to replace competition to a large degree in a coming era. We will need to find harmony as opposed to dissonance. I believe our educated, jobless children understand this. We must learn to help and encourage a new paradigm and get “old era thinking” out of the way.



I embrace the “panicked greenie” label and prefer that to being a “complacent scorched-earther.”

Though I did not write down the author of this quote, I believe it sums it up nicely: “It appears even the supposedly knowledgeable would rather live through the misery of the reality we have created … than put together a new negotiated reality.”



Barb Coddington

Glenwood Springs


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