ANOTHER MAHBU RECRUIT?

Mr. Stiles,

I came across you in an article I read in the Mountain Gazette. I see that some of our interests and concerns are the same. I might be a candidate for M.A.H.B.U., though from the unrepentant Utah Mormon with redneck affinities side of the equation.

I became fed up with Democrat- Republican, liberal- conservative politics in the mid-80's, and followed my family back to rural Utah. I soon became disillusioned with the New West agenda of tourism-recreation-service economics. Its proponents come across as very arrogant. Worse, I see this "unholy matrimony" between environmentalist-big government, liberal control freak "do-gooders" and pork-seeking, land speculating conservatives as destructive to the American heritage of democracy, freedom, equality, etc.

For years I fought the designation of my community as a National Park Service "national heritage area," geared towards the "New Ruralism" economy of the leisure environmentalist class.

Brad Van Dyke, representative

Rural Utahns For Local Solutions

P.O. Box 3

Spring City, Utah 84662

BONDERMAN'S $1.5 BILLION LOSS...Removed at Writers Request March 21, 2014

A MORMON ZEPHYR FAN

Hey jim,

I've been a fan of the zephyr ever since I was 14 and picked it up on a boy scout camp out to arches. What really sealed the deal is when my scout leader told me it was crap. So please put me on the email list. I'm part of a bimonthly publication now, it's called the Mormon worker. It's a paper about radical politics and Mormonism. Themormonworker.org

Keep up the great work.

Peace

Tyler Bushman

THIS READER WILL MISS THE ZEPHYR...

Jim,

I'll miss the unique publication that has been the Zephyr. I plead guilty to visiting Moab many times in the ugly lycra and riding and walking my bike around the area. I have come to love the area even if I never ride another mile on the bike there.

Living in a touristy town in Northern California, I know the mixed blessings of having so many outsiders in the town. Nevada City is not as inundated as Moab,though.

I became a big Abbey fan in the 80's and I've always eaten up what info your newspaper had about him.

You are a talented writer and thanks for the efforts for so long. I hope the on-line version works out. I'll miss the Zephyr in my hands, though. It's absence will leave a hole in my life.

I'm getting too sappy. Thanks and good-luck in whatever the future holds.

Mike Schmidt

Loving subscriber

THIS READER WILL NOT.

Jim:

I've been following your articles and wonder if you see that people like David Bonderman can also have a positive effect on Utah public lands issues (EDITOR'S NOTE: Mr. Richardson refers to recent Salt Lake Tribune articles about Governor Huntsman's newfound public concern for ATV abuse after traveling the state with David Bonderman, "a prominent venture capitalist and major financier for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.").

I'm also wondering what outcome you are looking for with your constant attacks on SUWA and the Trust? Do you truly think Utah public lands issues aren't benefitted by their involvement?

Do you believe that Utah public lands would be at less risk without these orgs' engagement? Who, if anyone, should take their place to protect public lands in Utah?

Best,

Thomas Richardson

EDITOR'S REPLY: In 2006, I noted in a "Writers on the Range" essay that no one was more vigilant than SUWA when it came to oil and gas impacts and ATV abuse. I suggested that it is failing, however, to consider impacts from the amenities economy. Now, with global warming threatening our very existance and a collapsing world economy that cannot support the luxury of an "amenities economy," worrying about ATV tracks almost seems like a quaint remembrance from the good old days, when off road damage was all we had to fret about.

It's like watching someone diligently cleaning the kitchen while the rest of the house burns down around them.

As for the wealth associated so blatantly with green groups these days. Try to imagine this:

What if, in the 1960s, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was funded by people who belonged to whites only country clubs and whose own lifestyles failed to reflect anything remotely open-minded when it came to racial equality? What if we'd discovered that Martin Luther King was getting a fat salary from his hypocritical benefactors?

What would THAT have done to King's credibility?

And finally Mr. Richardson asks, "who, if anyone, should take (SUWA's and GCT's) place to protect public lands in Utah?"

Ultimately, it needs to be someone who understands that we can't save the planet or even Utah AND maintain and even PROMOTE the mindless economic growth that most of their board members adhere to....JS

THE 'ADVOCACY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX'

Mr Stiles,

I am very appreciative of your work, especially because you speak the unpopular truth and think past facile and popular beliefs. I'm particularly grateful to read a challenge to what I think of (un-originally) as the Advocacy Industrial Complex. Sadly we have arrived at the point where we have numerous groups that are inextricably involved in the management (and perpetuation) of problems they were originally established to eliminate. This sorry scenario seems inevitably to be repeated across the issue horizon from social to environmental concerns once an executive salary pipeline is established.

Apropos your article, Disasters in Future May Be Closer Than They Appear, just this week the International Energy Agency issued it's report for 2008 stating that:

"The world's energy system is at a crossroads. Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable, environmentally, economically, socially. . . . What is needed is nothing short of an energy revolution." http://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/WEO2008SUM.pdf

I just received an article "Forgotten Fundamentals of the Oil Crisis" that appeared Sept.1978 in the American Journal of Physics. It remains, still, resonant with the issues of population, resource consumption and depletion that you mentioned. In spite of the clarity with which the author physicist Dr Albert Bartlett addressed these issues he remained a voice crying into the void, inaudible over a howling gale of nonsense (seems familiar doesn't it). Bartlett cuts through all the crap about how much oil we may still have offering that "It is possible to calculate an absolute upper limit to the amount of crude oil the earth could contain. We simply assert that the volume of petroleum in the earth cannot be larger than the volume of the earth . . . this earth full of oil will [would] last only 342 yr! [based on the rate of increasing consumption in 1970 -- 7.04%] "

Of course the best part of Bartlett's article is that much of his discussion is equally applicable to a variety of other critical resources. It offers and clearly explains how to use tools that will allow for grassroots level refutation of blithe assurances by corporate mouth pieces and regulatory shills that "everything is fine we have lots of it".

We can not shop our way out of critical resource shortages.

Best regards,

Robyn Edwards

Bayview, ID

Editor's Note: Thanks Robyn...I hope to include a summary of the article you mentioned in the first online Zephyr, next April...JS