Category Archives: Commentary

Another Attack on GMOs

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A Denver Post editorial describes how Boulder County, Colorado commissioners have bowed to “…a coalition of anti-GMO activists and representatives of the organic and natural food industries…” They voted to phase out GMO crops on county-owned farmland despite “…overwhelming consensus among scientists and prestigious scientific bodies that the foodstuffs are safe.” The president of a group representing the farmers points out an important advantage of GMO crops. “I haven’t sprayed insecticide on my corn in six years.” Crop yields have increased significantly, and, “…in the case of sugar beets, dramatically so.” However, to meet the demand of the activists, the Boulder commissioners ordered its staff to draft a plan to phase out GMO crops on county-owned farmland.

The move apparently is designed to force organic farming, which is “…a risk-fraught option…” The county provides major financial incentives to would-be organic farmers, but “…19 of 24 organic farmers who took advantage of the country’s program have failed in the past five years.” The editorial closes with the comments, “It is one thing to incentivize organic farming to promote agricultural diversity. It is quite another to banish high-quality, high-yield crops because of anti-scientific fears. Boulder County struck the right balance years ago and shouldn’t reverse itself now.”

Water from the Sky, Water from the Ground

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I grew up in New York State. If a stream ran through my property there, I could pump water out of it.

Not so in Colorado or many other states. Every drop of water out west belongs to someone: As it falls from the sky, as it runs across the land, as it sinks into aquifers. There’s a saying in Colorado that “whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting.” In Colorado, people still shoot each other over water. The Great American Desert never disappeared and may be coming back with rising temperatures and increased drought.

I had to learn that it’s illegal to have a rain barrel in Colorado – illegal to collect the rain that fell on my roof. Not that county sheriffs spent a lot of time searching for scofflaws – but it was unexpected for many transplant like myself.

But that’s about to change.

Danielson of Wheat Ridge and state Rep. Daneya Esgar of Pueblo sponsored a bill in the Colorado Legislature, House Bill 16-1005 (pdf), that would allow homeowners to collect rain from a residential rooftop. The bill passed the state House with overwhelming bipartisan support on Feb. 29, and passed the state Senate 27-6 on April 1. It’s now waiting for Gov. John Hickenloope to sign it into law.

Homeowners will be limited to 110 gallons of storage capacity, but this represents a change in the state. It represents some compromises – a bad word in some people’s mind these days. But Colorado is not alone:

Record droughts and a host of other water-supply worries have prompted numerous other states [15!] to enact laws that impact the use of rain barrels

Climate change, drought, and population growth is impacting the land we love. This will force us to confront water issues whether we like it or not. I live in southwest New Mexico now, with no irrigated “yard” at all and only container-raised herbs and one or two tomatoes each year. But I still own Colorado water rights, still marvel at how cheap it is to lease water for alfalfa and how expensive it is to buy water for a home.

We have some hard choice to make in the future, some choices about priorities – lawns vs food vs hay vs tradition vs cities vs… I don’t know what. There will be losers and winners, but it’s a topic we must address.

Government Support of Rugged Individualism

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VillaUncleSamBerrymanCartoonMy recent review of The Oregon Trail couldn’t cover everything – it’s a long and interesting book. But I found this fascinating:

With reference to the Pacific Wagon Road Act of 1857, author Rinker Buck notes that “among other improvements to the trail… [it] became one of the largest government-financed projects of the nineteenth century… This model of government support for a major development project became popular and was accepted as the new norm. Each new phase of frontier growth… was also supported by either outright government subsidies, land giveaways, or federally supported irrigation and bridge-building projects. That was the tradition established by the Oregon Trail and it has always amused me that the myth of ‘rugged individualism’ still plays such a large role in western folklore and American values. In fact, our vaulted rugged individualism was financed by huge government largess.”

I’m no historian, but that resonates for me.

Certainly in my own home area of southwest New Mexico, the federal government conquered Native American and Mexican lands to allow Anglo Americans to move in – perhaps not the history we most wish to brag about. But denying the role of government is simply silly.

We New Mexicans try to come to terms with some of our history – the American town of Columbus recently “celebrated” Pancho Villa’s raid 100 years ago with its Mexican neighbor-town of Palomas. Maybe “celebrated” is wrong because people died – “commemorated”, perhaps – or just found a good reason for a street fair. In 1916, the United States invaded another country to protect its citizens! But today we all remember a freedom fighter for Mexico and our ties across the boarder. BTW – Do you know that American school buses pick up American-born children in Columbus and transport them to Deming every school-day?

When traveling to Palmoas for cheaper drugs or eye-care or dentistry, I always have lunch in Mexico at the Pink Store. If you ever get down here, I recommend it.

Celebrate the rugged pioneers, taciturn cowboys, and self-reliant ranchers – they were all of those things – but remember that without government support, the American West would be a very different place. That’s still true today.

Sanibel Island Vacation

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This commentary is a summary of my notes taken during a vacation with our daughter and her two children. The oldest grandkid was on Spring Break and the youngest was excused from school to go on the trip. The Denver metro area is having a blizzard and our backyard has about two feet of snow accumulated so far today while Sanibel is supposed to be in the high 70s with sunshine today. Denver International Airport is mostly closed, but our flight came back two days before all that started.

We flew non-stop on Frontier with very small and uncomfortable seats to Fort Myers, Fl and drove our rental car over the causeway to the island. We stocked up on groceries at a Publix on the way. We stayed at the Sundial Resort, where our daughter negotiated a 40% reduction in the room rate. We had nearly perfect weather of sunny skies and mid 80 temperatures with only one impressive and short squall that dumped more rain in minutes than what we get in the Denver area in a normal month. The biggest disappointment was that we weren’t able to do snorkeling to look at all the sea creatures. We heard Lake Okeechobee had to be drawn down from the heavier than usual rains. That made the surf too murky for snorkeling. The people at the visitor center told us it is a common spring occurrence, and they are working to get the practice stopped or modified in some way. One warning is that we did not use insect repellent on early beach visits and paid the price with the very itchy “no-see-um” bites that have stayed with us until after the vacation.

There are many fun and interesting things to do on a Sanibel vacation. Walking or relaxing on the beach with the sound of the waves, watching all the birds and boats, and twice seeing a pod of dolphins chase schools of fish up toward the shore. The bike riding is great on the island with the extensive biking paths where the only changes in elevation are the raised bridges over canals. One bike ride was to the light house and fishing pier, which was crowded. Sheepshead and mangrove snappers had been caught. (The bikes were “complimentary, although there is a $40/night resort fee for those and other recreational equipment.) A visit to the sea shell museum was a hit.

Favorite things done on the trip were lounging at the pool or on the beach and the night low-tide “shelling” with flashlights. Probably the most common creature left above the water by the receding tide were beautiful “fighting conch,” which were commonly 2 inch shells of various colors. One night expedition found three of the very large conch. (We were told it is pronounced “conk.”) We read several warnings that keeping a shell with a living inhabitant was prohibited. It might be difficult to put a really beautiful shell back when you see it’s occupied, but it’s the right thing to do.

We saw two 5-6 foot alligators up close (from our rental van). One was beside the main road that connects Sanibel with Captiva. It hissed at us as we pulled up beside it and took its picture. The other was sunning beside the water during our drive through the J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge, which is popular for all the varieties of birds. We saw numerous lizards and one of the endangered Eastern Indigo Snakes. It was crawling across the grass by our condo and disappeared into dense vegetation. An interesting fact about the snakes is that they kill prey by violently thrashing against whatever is nearby. Captive snakes are given dead animals to prevent them from injuring themselves in this violent activity!

There are many wonderful restaurants on the island, and we had a running conversation about which was the best that we tried. All were busy. The Bubble House is a strange place apparently so named because it has chandeliers made of bubbling Christmas lights. Our waiter was a young woman wearing Boy Scout shorts and shirt and a headband with cat ears. The meal came with wonderful cheesy bread and sticky rolls. The menu was a bit odd, not extensive, and relatively expensive. The key lime pie was declared the “best ever.” The best of Doc Ford’s was the pound of “Calypso” peel and eat shrimp. We tried the Island Cow, and thought it was so good we went back for our last meal on the island. The most interesting meal there was the “Holy Cow,” which was a combination of fried shrimp, oysters, clams, and calamari. Alligator could be and was added to make a meal that could easily be enough for two to three people. I’ve decided to leave the Lazy Flamingo for last because it was my favorite. Very friendly people in what I think of as a beach café setting with a mix of locals and tourists. We recommend that you try the fresh grouper there or anywhere else it is on the menu. There were two trips to Pinocchio’s, which is a very busy ice cream place. Try the “dirty sand dollar,” if you like chocolate.

I’ll close with a description of a memorable 16×20 inch cake decorated with a beach motif from Bailey’s for a tenth birthday celebration. The cake had blue icing waves on the sides, blue water and sand (graham cracker crumbs) on top, and a variety of sugar “sea shells.” There also was a miniature beach chair, palm trees, a beach bucket and shovel, umbrella, and sand castle. A wonderful birthday cake and wonderful vacation. Try Sanibel, you’ll like it!

Clean Energy for Conservatives – for Liberals – for Americans

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I ran across an interesting article on csmonitor.com about Clear Path, a conservative organization advocating for clean energy.

“Curbing the impacts of climate change isn’t the only positive of switching to lower-carbon energy. Innovating and deploying cleaner fuels helps create jobs while reducing US dependence on foreign oil. That’s a plus for the economy and national security, not just the climate… even if climate change weren’t a risk – which we think it is – these policies would still make sense…”

It’s not just conservatives looking at clean energy with a fresh perspective. There’s a shift in thinking on the left, too.

Clean Energy’s principles offer everyone something: Smaller government, innovation, energy security, lower air pollution risk, free market choices, all based on actual cost/benefit analyses.

In the 2008 election cycle, candidates on both sides of the aisle agreed climate change posed a risk and that cleaner energy sources offered a solution. Since then, partisan rancor has overwhelmed the debate.

It’s time to get off the Blue Team and the Red Team. Save your tribalism for your favorite sports team. Real life must depend on real data and realistic policies – if only because reality has a habit of winning over human wishes. To obstruct every idea because of distrust is deeply pessimistic and ultimately self-defeating. We’ll never all agree – after all, there’s 300 million of us Americans – but I like Clean Path’s belief that we can do this together.

Rocky Flats Museum Still Searching for Home

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A recent article describes how members of a nonprofit have “…salvaged thousands of items during the decontamination and destruction of the Rocky Flats Plant.” They are searching for a permanent space for the artifacts after years of moving in and out of temporary spaces. There had been a federal grant of $492,000 obtained by former U.S. senator Wayne Allard in 2007 to find a space, but that money is gone.

The directors are paying about $600/month out of pocket for storage rental and other expenses. The items in storage include 400 boxes of photographs, maps and drawings along with thousands of items such as glove boxes and safety and monitoring equipment. Museum president Murph Widdowfield said, “Our goal is to find space for a small display so the Rocky Flats Plant can live on and continue educating people.” Museum historian Ron Heard said, “It’s one of those stories that’s not a happy story—the building of nuclear weapons—but it’s a part of Colorado history.” The vice president, Larry Wilson, “…said the items not only help tell the story of the country’s nuclear legacy, but also the story of Jefferson County.”

Scott Surovchak, Rocky Flats legacy site manager for the Department of Energy, added that “…more than 100,000 workers passed through the site in the course of its roughly 50-year history, allowing a middle-class buildout of Arvada, Broomfield, and Westminster.” He added that the board wants a place to take grandkids and great-grandkids to show them and the general public, “here’s what we did.”

I find it encouraging that Surovchak commented, “The current board is different than the original group, which included a bunch of the ‘anti crowd’.” That’s a welcome change from the time when I volunteered to help inventory what was in many of all those boxes and write papers about the history of the plant.