Utah

I am off to Salt Lake City for a meeting of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.  I have served on that board for 18 years and we have made some progress in public land protection in what might be described as some of the most glorious landscapes in the world.  But I have to say that the crazies in Utah, like other western states, just never get tired of trying to pillage every watershed, species, and acre for their own purposes.  Here I mean mostly coal, hard rock, and petroleum production.  They never have to give up because they have a bottomless pit of money to use in fighting environmental protection.  These people who put short term profit over long range watershed health are anything but timid.  Now they actually have convinced a Utah governor that he can take title to the federal public lands by saying it belongs to the people of Utah and not the people of the United States.   Yes, Utah has a real tool running government.  It just gets crazier there.