Earth Matters: Speak no evil

They tell me timing is everything. In journalism it is important to be timely otherwise it’s all yesterday’s news. Yesterday’s news is fine for lining the bird cage or training a puppy, but it isn’t worth beans in the context of current events.

I am not making excuses when I say it isn’t always easy to be timely in a weekly newspaper. Furthermore, having been laid back by current economic malaise, I have even less control over when my maunderings might be published. So timely is relative; I try to write as if it doesn’t matter.

While it may already be yesterday’s news, I write here to congratulate newly elected members of the Crested Butte Town Council. As cub reporter for the Crested Butte Pilot, I covered town council news for many years and five different mayors. I know sitting behind that council table is no easy job. While it might seem like a popularity contest during the election, trust me: it’s not.

Unfortunately, neither is a town council election an exercise in pure democracy. This sad circumstance confronted me during the candidates’ forum prior to the recent election. Members of the voting public were frustrated because candidates were advised not to answer questions about important issues facing Crested Butte.

There are at least three issues council members and candidates can’t discuss publically outside formal council meetings. These include the proposed Foothills Annexation, proposed Sixth Street Station development, and the proposed Mt. Emmons molybdenum mine. All these proposals are important to town residents who wanted to know where prospective candidates stood on the issues.

Questions: How the hell can voters decide who to vote for if candidates can’t answer any and all questions? Why are council members enjoined from discussing important issues in any forum other than regular and scheduled Town Council meetings? What happened to council members sitting down with constituents over a beer and discussing town business?

I know the answers: First and foremost, the Town wants to avoid future litigation from proponents of proposed projects. The Town must act in either a quasi- or direct regulatory capacity concerning proposed developments. Should council members or prospective council members demonstrate they have already made up their minds about a project, the proponent could appeal a final decision. He could say the decision was made before all evidence was on the table and could ultimately have grounds for a lawsuit.

My gripe is not about erudite, prudent and well-meaning advice to elected representatives. My gripe, and the angst expressed by the voting public, is that the enjoinder subverts democratic process. One question remains extant: How the hell can voters decide who to vote for if candidates can’t talk?

Having posed these difficult questions, a responsible pundit would set about proposing answers. Try as I might, though, I can’t think of any.
Gone are the days when an elected official can say: Elect me because I believe Foothills annexation is more trouble than it is worth, a waste of time and money in an economically difficult business climate. Deep in the past is the time a council person could say, we don’t need to develop Sixth Street Station until all other commercial property in town is built out and rented.

Thirty years have passed since council members and town staff could say flat out, “I am opposed to a molybdenum mine on Mt. Emmons and I will fight to prevent one from being developed.” Back in the day, that was the mantra by which candidates aspired to Town Council. Town staff was unabashedly tasked with working to prevent a mine.
Furthermore, I remember sitting with mayors, council members and town staff in numerous watering holes, strategizing how to beat the mine. Our cards were on the table; mine operators knew they would have to overcome not only public opinion but also town government at every level.

Perhaps one strategy that came from those confabs was the town’s watershed ordinance, conceived back then to keep the mine out of Crested Butte’s drinking water. Adopted by town government and upheld by the courts, the ordinance established the town firmly in a regulatory capacity. From this position we are today unable to let any cats out of the bag as to whether or not we want a mine.

I wonder if this is some kind of irony, or something altogether more sinister.

Earth Matters: Temperature rising

I used to think good bourbon kept the bugs at bay, that I could get vitamin C from screwdrivers, and that a little beef bouillon mixed with vodka provided my required dosage of protein. When I was unfortunate enough to get sick, I would drink hot toddies with copious quantities of brandy warmed and mixed with Gran Marnier, a dollop of honey and some lemon. I was generally a robust and healthy mixologist.

As most alcoholics do, I was simply fooling myself. Truth be told, all that booze probably didn’t help my immune system one bit. Furthermore, and if memory serves, I didn’t get sick any more or less frequently when Kochevar’s was my health care resource of choice. Hangovers were my most common malaise.

Having plugged the jug, I am much more aware of what I ingest. I know what I eat, I measure my hydration, my weight is more easily controlled and my head is—relatively—clear. This is all good stuff in the context of what I hope is a healthy and active lifestyle. In retrospect, it is a little surprising that I weathered those more, uh…holistic years as well as I did. Just lucky, I guess.

Sober clarity provides the opportunity to actively avoid illness and disease, as much as a man my age can. That is to say, instead of sitting in an airport bar sucking down bourbon and soda, for example, I now spend my time scrubbing my hands until they chap and rinsing with hand sanitizer. Anticipating my time in a tin can rife with contagion, I hydrate, cleanse and avoid obvious germ hangouts like handrails and door handles.

It doesn’t do any good. I’d have been as well served sucking down that bourbon…except for the hangover. Despite all my sanitary precautions, a recent flight on the biohazard express penetrated my heretofore healthy system.

Living up here at the head of the draw, I am not often exposed to the vast variety of germs that make themselves at home in our human congregation. No epidemiologist, I figure constant exposure to an assortment of virulent bugs better prepares an immune response. In other words, our clean mountain air serves to keep us healthy only if we stay there. The minute we expose ourselves to foreign viruses, or when visitors import those critters to our mountain fastness, we are bug bait. Katie, bar the door.

Thankfully, the bugs didn’t kick in until I had made it home to Crested Butte. My most distinct apprehension about air travel is that I will get sick in some distant and unsympathetic port. Not only would I have to endure the agonies of disease with no commiseration, I would suffer the condemnation of those I was unintentionally exposing to my obvious sickness. At home, only my cat would suffer exposure, and I’m pretty sure cats don’t get human disease.

Health care begins, and ultimately ends at home. Here I can shuffle a block or two to the doctor’s office and hope he can provide cure, comfort and solace. Alternatively, I can flop on the couch and read or watch television, and consume mostly worthless over-the-counter comfort and remedy.

Television provides scant comfort because the news is rife with information about widespread viral death and immunization that may be worse than the disease or altogether worthless. In the midst of the H1N1 pandemic, we continue arguing about health care reform and are continuously bombarded with advertisements about everything from erectile dysfunction to restless leg syndrome to…whatever.

It is no small irony that health care reform debate rages in the midst of the most virulent pandemic to impact our population in almost a century. Health care reform opponents should take a look around at a society sick on lousy diets and increasingly vulnerable to any formerly unknown and potent virus that comes down the pike.

They should consider the souls who don’t have a doctor a block away and who couldn’t afford him if they did. Those who like health care the way it is should check out profit margins of big pharma and health insurance providers. They should sit next to me in an airport when I’m spewing contagion.

Between bouts of coughing and on top of the pain of a swollen throat, I pray I haven’t fallen victim to what one friend calls “pig flu.” That eventuality might cause me to seek solace in warm brandy and Gran

Earth Matters: Flat earthers eat their children

I can’t help it. Darkness burrows into my soul and chews at my attitude like an evil malignancy. My brain shuts down and sleep becomes my only escape. I awake to no morning sunlight and close my eyes again to deny outside darkness.

Cold fingers my marrow, freezes my hands and numbs my skin. I don gloves and more clothes—that’s why they make gore-tex—and gather warmth to my core. I can take the cold—I signed up for it—but the darkness gets me. There is nothing for it at 39 degrees north latitude except to move south…and that won’t happen.

The irony isn’t lost on me when this time of year I again jump on the sky-is-falling-global-warming bandwagon. Here I am, up at the head of the draw at 9,000 feet in the frozen food section, freezing my ass off and hollering that global warming will destroy the world…as we know it. I’m sure that would be just fine for some folks.

Other folks simply don’t believe global warming is happening and deny anthropogenic—human—causes as responsible. U.S. Senator James Inhofe said, “Much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science…The threat of catastrophic global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American People.”

I have a friend in Denver who categorically denies global warming and rejects any assertion that human industry is at fault.

“It is simply liberal propaganda,” he posits, “promulgated because they can’t find any other meaningful agenda.”

I asked when was the last time he visited Rocky Mountain National Park to see where the glaciers used to be. When was the last time he walked on a receding glacier or negotiated recessional moraines? Been in any floods lately? He pleaded a restrictive work load and admitted he seldom leaves Denver.

These are the guys I liken to flat-earthers. Whatever minimal understanding of human nature I enjoy informs me that those who denied the earth as round, labored under the same mindset as those who today believe there is no such thing as global warming…and if there were, it’s not our fault. Yes: flat-out, hot-headed human nature.

But, hey! Columbus has already weighed anchor and is headed off across the warming ocean to a new world. Science confirms the poop in the fan, although the minute one bunch of scientists stands up and says the world is melting, another stands up and says the first is full of nonsense. More human nature.

Anecdotal and visual evidence is worth something, however, and I’m convinced that sure as winter is around the corner, global warming is changing our world. Here is some of that anecdotal stuff I am talking about.

Many years ago, I weighed anchor myself on a 1,000-mile canoe trip north down Canada’s Mackenzie River. This massive and moving body of water drains much of northern Canada through its delta into the Arctic Ocean. We floated haphazardly north in the giant flow, paddling up tributaries to fish and camping on shores scoured yearly by ice flows at spring breakup. Farther north, trees disappear at timberline into hummocky infinities of reindeer moss and permafrost.

An August, 2009 Associated Press article brought my Mackenzie trip back to me: “Climate trouble may be bubbling up in the Far North.” Among the myriad problems of melting ice caps, it seems permafrost is melting and releasing greenhouse components carbon dioxide and methane gas. Think stinky swamp gas trapped inside frozen tundra, melting and bubbling up. This is a feedback loop: Climate changes melt permafrost which releases methane which contributes to warming which melts…on and on.

I have also walked on Alaska’s Root Glacier in the Wrangell and St. Elias Mountains. The glacier is melting and it is difficult to figure where the glacier ends for the recessional moraine obscuring its nose. Unable to transport erosional material, the glacier itself is largely covered with debris. I have not experienced the flooding in Bangladesh where the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna Rivers meet sea level a little too high for human habitation. Nor have I witnessed ongoing wildfires turning California to ash.

In the long run, it won’t matter what the flat-earther, global-warming deniers think. We are probably long past a tipping point where we could have reversed our warming climate trends; denial simply won’t matter. Furthermore, I’ve discovered that flat-earthers didn’t really eat their children, but maybe they should have.

Earth Matters: De-escalate

What? No missile shield in Eastern Europe to protect us from the nukes they’ll be lobbing at us? Katie, bar the door.

I spent considerable youthful time worrying that living at ground zero in Colorado Springs I’d be instantly vaporized in an air blast that would level most of the Front Range. Now peace-monger Obama wants to open the door to any crazy militant that can package up plutonium and launch it our way. I’d probably best get back to building my air-raid shelter; call me paranoid.

While the nuclear threat from Russia is probably less than it was when I was a kid in the 1950s, nuclear proliferation in countries like Iran, Pakistan and North Korea is still scary. George W. Bush’s way of coping with the threat was to install a missile defense system in former Soviet Bloc countries Poland and Czech Republic. Obama has scrapped that plan.

Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Popovkin lauded Obama’s cancellation of the missile defense plan as a “victory of reason over ambitions. Naturally, we will cancel countermeasures which Russia has planned in response,” Popovkin said. One such countermeasure was deployment of Iskander missiles along Russia’s border. I feel safer already.

Although Russia was the most outspoken opponent of the proposed missile defense shield, the plan was designed to address threats from rogue states like Iran and North Korea. Russia simply didn’t like the idea of the United States setting up missiles and radar in its former satellite countries and right on its border.

Obama’s intelligence, hopefully better than Bush’s, suggests that Iran isn’t as close as we thought to acquiring nuclear attack capability. Instead of irritating the Russians, Obama’s defense strategy would use radar in Alaska and California to detect launches, and respond with forty-four interceptor missiles in Alaska and California, and another 130 based on ships.

In return for us backing off the defense system in Eastern Europe, we hope Russia will join the United States in castigating Iran into backing off its nuclear program. It will be a while before Iranian nukes could touch the U.S. homeland, but Iran’s Shahab-3 missiles have a range of 1,240 miles. That’s enough carrying power to reach Israel, or NATO countries Greece, Bulgaria or Romania…or for that matter, Russia.

Obama’s de-escalation, if it can be called that, was not welcomed in Central and Eastern Europe. Former Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said, “This is not good news for the Czech state, for Czech freedom and independence. It puts us in a position where we are not firmly anchored in terms of partnership, security and alliance, and that’s a certain threat.” Oh, well; Obama’s Republican foes didn’t like the move either.

Although Obama’s new “smarter, stronger and swifter” plan maintains United States defense capabilities, I perceive eliminating missile sites on Russian borders as de-escalation of bellicose saber rattling. Despite irritating the Poles and Czechs, it might have placated the Russians…at least a little. It probably doesn’t faze Iran’s Ahmadinejad, who keeps insisting the Holocaust didn’t happen, and North Korea probably hasn’t got the news yet and could care less anyway.

From my perspective as a card-carrying peacenik, de-escalation is a good thing. Nuclear non-proliferation is a good thing. Diplomacy over pre-emptive and overwhelming force is a good thing. Civil discourse over vitriolic polarization is a good thing. If we could achieve a little domestic de-escalation right here in the homeland, that would be a good thing. If only…

Earth Matters: Hot button

They are all around us even if we don’t know they are there. I didn’t really know what hot-buttons were a few years ago; now I can’t tap out a couple of hundred words without touching a hot-button and igniting a firestorm of response. Suddenly we are a polarized people and Elk Avenue is no longer isolated enough to be immune.

Perhaps it is a matter of perception and I am over-reacting. Back in the day, a hot-button issue was whether I let my hair grow longer than GI Joe. Wild and crazy hippies were an issue when rednecks cruised Main Street using sheep shears to impose sartorial standards. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll were contentious in a society changing from the values of my father to those of his son.

Barber shops and bars are traditionally places where discussion devolves to religion, politics and other hot-buttons. I always thought that might be dangerous in barber shops where men wielded sharp instruments and respondents were captive in a barber chair. Now, of course, the discussion pool is limited because walk-in clients don’t sit around and instead must make appointments.

Bars remain places where alcohol loosens tongues, fires emotions and encourages hot-buttons. While I no longer spend any time in that environment, I remember well hot-buttons that when touched, caused venerable guzzlers to forgo their beverage and walk out the door. Politics has always been a hot-button.

It is certainly no less so now, although I suspect the definition of politics has expanded to fully encompass affairs of state foreign and domestic, government—how much, how little—and policy crafted by governance.

Since I am by no means, and never have been an outright anarchist, I concern myself with government and governance. That means, if I talk about it at all, I’m always pushing the politics hot-button.

I’m told there was a time when a majority of Americans were pretty much on the same page regarding their government, although I bet that attitude falls under the rubric of Pollyanna good ole’ days. On this point, the hot-button is revisionist history; the first generation makes history, the second generation remembers and the third forgets. Get used to it.

Perhaps every generation believes it is living through uniquely interesting times, and that future and past generations experienced bland, either good or bad times. The Great Depression, for example, was interesting only to those able to sustain themselves through the economic debacle. To everyone else, it was a bad time. We remember the Eisenhower era as a time of American well-being. But ask those persecuted under Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts if they were happy. Oh yeah: communism was a hot-button.

The relative heat of buttons varies with time and throughout history. During the Clinton Presidency, for example, the hottest button out there was Monica Lewinski…or maybe that was just an excuse. Undoubtedly, some folks hated Clinton as much as I hated his successor and set about spending millions on impeachment that had no effect whatsoever. That was a hot-button for me.

George Bush refined the art of heating buttons to a fine point. He created hot-buttons with red herrings, deflecting criticism from the Iraq War, for example, into whether and how gay people should serve in his armies. Finally, through his own ineptitude, Bush himself became the hot-button…at least in my experience.

Hot-buttons tickle my fingers now; health care reform is practically as hot as buttons get. No wonder, since the amount people pay for health insurance increased 30 percent from 2001 to 2005, while income for the same period increased only 3 percent. Approximately 50 percent of personal bankruptcies are due to medical expenses. We are a better nation than to countenance that.

The latest hot-button is President Obama’s address to the country’s school children. Conservatives fear the President will somehow brainwash kids, which to me demonstrates lack of confidence in their own parenting skills.

Ouch! Hot! My keyboard is melting.

Earth Matters: Dead bear walking

“People can pretty much take care of themselves,” I remember my father telling me. “If we get into trouble we can usually figure a way to get out of it. It’s probably our own fault we’re in trouble in the first place.”

My father undoubtedly never thought I would remember so much of what he told me, especially an observation that implies a high degree of personal responsibility. A habitual screw-up even as a kid, I figured if I took responsibility for my screw-ups I could perhaps approach something resembling redemption. It worked…well, some of the time.

“Animals, on the other hand,” continued my father, “don’t have that luxury. Animals are at the mercy of us humans and don’t have a say in the trouble we put on them.”

Those words colored my life more than my father could ever have known. In the face of the way we humans treat animals, I usually find myself on the animals’ side. I figure we two-leggeds can probably help ourselves. If you think man’s inhumanity to man is egregious, consider man’s inhumanity to animals…poor, dumb animals.

Often we don’t even realize how our actions inadvertently affect animals. Having been granted dominion over most everything, we go about our business with little regard for those we believe lack sentience, feelings or enough brains to understand what we do. But I think that is wrong.

We don’t consider bears, for example, to be the fastest swimmers in the gene pool. Faced with a bruin in the boonies, however, there is no question in our viscera that the bear is higher on the food chain. He may not be smarter than we are, but he is darned sure bigger, meaner, grouchier and hungrier. The only time we are higher on the food chain is when our opposable thumb can work the bolt on our varmint rifle.

I watched this morning, as Crested Butte’s Finest cruised the neighborhood monitoring bear activity. The officer stopped and grabbed his shotgun, then jumped back in the car and took off down the block. This was bear hunting the modern, urban way.

Habituated bears, town bears, are animals used to being around humans because they eat our trash. Our current crop of dumpster divers are second generation trash bears who know no other means of finding an easy meal. Mama taught them how to do it. These are doomed bears; three such critters have been killed in town this year.

It’s our fault—collectively—that bears are in town. Instead of out cruising for berries or digging up grubs, they tip over dumpsters to get at our discarded barbeque ribs and break into cars for the popcorn we left on the seat. They don’t know how to find food differently, and here they will ultimately meet their demise. No doubt: a garbage bear is a dead bear.

Our community has actually made progress in bear awareness. Most of us now know why bears visit, and we’ve locked up our garbage or otherwise taken steps to discourage bears. Bear Saver trash receptacles, lockable dumpsters and truly inscrutable public trash cans keep bears out. More evolved or not, I still haven’t figured out how to get into some of our trash cans.

I mentioned to a Colorado Division of Wildlife officer that I don’t remember so many significant bear visitations in the past. He told me back in the day we let our dogs run loose which ran the bears out of town. Now we must corral our dogs and keep them on a leash, so bears have free rein.

“What if we let the dogs run loose just for a week or so?” I asked. The local constable rolled his eyes and said, “It’s one of those damned if we do, damned if we don’t situations. If we relax dog laws we’ll start getting more reports of dog bites.”

Roving dogs, marauding bears: life at the head of the draw. The poor bears.

Earth Matters: Road trip

Imagine you are the Secret Service. You’re all tricked out in your conservative suit, button-down collar and school tie. Your tasseled loafers are shined to a mirror finish and your earpiece communicator is synchronized to a fare-thee-well. You’ve traded in your Crown Victoria for a giant Cadillac Escalade because…you are taking George W. Bush on a Road Trip.

Imagine all you want, but this part, at least, is true. Bush and his entourage visited Crested Butte last week as guests at a wedding celebrated by another Texas oil family. I think the wedding was at a ranch in Gunnison, but Bush’s Crawford contingent chose to stay in Mt. Crested Butte. I guess Gunnison’s Holiday Inn Express just wasn’t…uh, secure enough. Instead, Bush drove a big ‘ole SUV and lassoed the entire sixth floor at Mountaineer Square.

I first heard of the former politician’s visit to our fair valley as a request—not assignment—from my boss. Given all the homework I’d done on the previous administration, my editor figured I’d be the one to perhaps conduct an interview with Mr. Bush and pose a few poignant questions.

At first I refused to believe George W. Bush had abandoned his two long-horned steers back at the ranch. It was difficult to understand why he would venture into the liberal enclave that is the upper East River Valley. While I realize there are significant holdouts who still believe Bush is the coolest thing since thumbscrews, most of us hold the realistic opinion that Bush was the worst president since Attila the Hun. I did my best to popularize that opinion, which is undoubtedly why my boss suggested I conduct an interview.

I declined my boss’ suggestion on the grounds that I might not be able to craft my queries with the proper deference. I’d likely end up in Gitmo, and I’d just as soon spend the rest of my life in Crested Butte. I don’t do well in hot climates, and even New Max down in Florence might be a little warm for me.

Alerted to the presence of the Beast, I watched the drama unfold over the weekend. One tenacious observer commented on Facebook: “So a couple of days ago I’m driving down the mountain, and I see this dude driving a big SUV that looks just like George W. Bush…turns out it was George Freakin’ W. Bush…He kind of had this look on his face like; ‘damn, I git to drive agin’!”

Another Facebookie wrote that he observed a large black bear crossing the road in Mt. Crested Butte and wondered if the bear was there to perhaps “visit (or maybe eat) W!” A response to his comment: “Poor bear would get very sick from tainted meat!” And remember, bears can eat almost anything.

I took my research to a bench on Elk Avenue. While Facebook is fun and I can peruse it without leaving the house, the bench has the advantage of face-to-face. Body language and scenery are articulate.

“If you could ask George W. Bush two questions,” asked a friend, “what would they be?”

“Only two questions?” I protested. “I want three.”

“Okay three,” she acceded. “What would they be?”

My first question would be, “Why did you invade Iraq…really?” After all, it was something of a stretch to believe the old weapons of mass destruction drivel. Saddam Hussein was too busy gassing Kurds with imported American nerve gas and blowing up fish with hand grenades to be serious about weapons of mass destruction.

My second question would be, “How can you sleep at night?” Having perpetrated so much nasty stuff during his term in office, and with the blood of so many American soldiers on his hands, I don’t know what sleeping pills Bush uses, but I want some.

My third question would be, “How come you didn’t reply to any of my letters?” Even Bill Clinton—between dalliances—had the common courtesy to send me form letters. Courtesy was not Bush’s strong suit, and if it had been, I bet he couldn’t spell it. Maybe that’s why he didn’t write back: spelling impaired.

Finally, my research turned up an interesting tidbit of unconfirmed information. Imagine you are the Secret Service and your GPS unit tells you the best way to get to Crested Butte is to drive up over Schofield Pass. Then imagine you get your big ‘ole Cadillac Escalade hung up somewhere in the Punchbowls. Now imagine those tasseled loafers scrambling on the rock.