Put up a parking lot
Mr Destroy Everything hopes people will rush out to Utah in order to mine and farm and pave over the entire state without delay. He expects a cut of the profits.
President Trump said he would dramatically reduce the size of a vast expanse of protected federal land in Utah on Monday, a rollback of some two million acres that is the largest in scale in the nation’s history.
The administration said it would shrink Bears Ears National Monument, a sprawling region of red rock canyons, by about 85 percent, and cut another area, Grand Staircase-Escalante, to about half its current size. The move, a reversal of protections put in place by Democratic predecessors, comes as the administration pushes for fewer restrictions and more development on public lands.
Yeah. Let’s build condos on every inch of Yosemite, and shopping malls all over Yellowstone (supervolcano nothing – it will save a bundle on heating bills), and golf courses in Olympic National Park, and casinos in the Grand Canyon. Why the fuck not?
Look at all that wasted land, just lying there, with honest entrepreneurs not allowed to build hotels on it.
The decision to reduce Bears Ears is expected to trigger a legal battle that could alter the course of American land conservation, possibly opening millions of protected public acres to oil and gas extraction, mining, logging and other commercial activities.
Yay! No more public lands! All of it private and put to work and off limits to the smelly peasants.
“Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington,” Mr. Trump said, speaking at Utah’s domed State Capitol. “And guess what? They’re wrong.”
“Together,” he continued, “we will usher in a bright new future of wonder and wealth.”
And money money money, and no dirty damp dangerous public lands for people to walk on and enjoy. If they want beautiful places and nature and mountain vistas they’ll just have to buy them!
Environmentalists and some native tribes say Mr. Trump’s move will destroy the national heritage and threaten some 100,000 sites of archaeological importance tucked into the monuments’ desert landscapes.
Oh blah, who cares. Read an old National Geographic, it’s the same thing.
For its supporters, the Bears Ears monument designation came to symbolize an indigenous victory after centuries of frustration.
For its opponents, it was an abuse of power by Mr. Obama, an infringement on the right of local people to decide what happens in their backyard.
“Our country places a high premium on consent,” said Phil Lyman, a county commissioner who lives at the edge of the monument. The designation, he said, “felt very nonconsensual.”
Wellllll…by “local people” and “their backyard” and “consent” they of course mean local white people and white people’s backyard and consent of white people. They don’t mean the browner people who were there long before the white people and who never gave their consent to all that moving in and taking over and calling it their “backyard.”
I once had a student when I was teaching in Texas who went to Colorado over Thanksgiving break. When she came back, knowing I was from Oklahoma, she decided to tell me what was wrong with Oklahoma – not enough concrete (she obviously didn’t go through the greater Oklahoma City area, which is nothing but concrete). There are a lot of people who feel like that, and the people who don’t have tended to take the national park system for granted.
Have I said yet this week that I hate Trump? If not, I have waited way too long.
It’s really hard not to despair for our species. Some know better, but it’s infuriating to see so much destroyed by people who know sweet fuck all.
It seems Trump won’t stop until he has spread to the rest of the world the wasteland within his heart.
“Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington,” Mr. Trump said, speaking at Utah’s domed State Capitol. “And guess what? They’re wrong. The natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant developers. And,” he added, “Hillary’s a crook, and Obama’s from Africa. Don’t tip your waitress. Good night, everybody.”
Funny how it is only ‘nonconsensual’ when you say no to one particular side. When you say yes to them (and hence say no to the other side) it’s fine.
One of my Environmental Science students asked me yesterday if our species was really worth saving. At this point, how does one answer that honestly without being out of a job?
Well, saying that it’s not a factual question isn’t technically lying..
True. I could refer him to the Philosophy department.
It seems more and more that we are a costly, failed experiment. We’re taking out a lot of other species on our own way to destruction. Humans as a species will probably survive, but civilization is fragile and likely doomed unless the Trump minded can be reined in and kept from the levers of power forever. This is something we seem unable or unwilling to do. The rise of someone like Trump to the level of power he has attained shows we are not yet serious about running our affairs in a sane, safe and reasonable manner and cannot be trusted in large numbers.
If we could quietly go extinct without a lot of ecological collateral damage, I’d almost be ready to vote for something like that. Are the heights of our genius and creativity possible without the depths of our depravity and destructiveness?
Yeah. I could never kill anyone, but if I could wave a magic wand just once, this awful species would no longer be able to reproduce. Time would take care of the rest.
Big Orange Tractor, eh?