Soap Box

To the editor,

How will you remember the student climate strikes last month? What will you hold in your memory? You have a choice!

I hold the inspiration and hope of thousands of young citizens worldwide expressing themselves by walking out of school and demanding a future livable planet. They remind humanity of the responsibility to take care of our only home planet for their future, and the future of all living beings threatened by a climate crisis and the sixth extinction.

These young citizens know their elders aren’t acting responsibly and don’t have as much at stake in the future as they do. Today youth are concerned about a planetary, climatic holocaust. I hope students walking out of school expressing concern for their future and the planet’s will have impact on elders not paying attention. They follow in the footsteps of 12-year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki, who spoke to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, saying, “if you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it.” When will we listen?

I am moved and inspired by the youth climate actions “Fridays for Future” (www.fridaysforfuture.org) and “Our Children’s Trust” (www.ourchildrenstrust.org). I invite concerned people to learn about Citizens’ Climate Lobby (citizensclimatelobby.org ) to take positive, respectful action to provide a livable planet for the future of our descendants. Find your local chapter under the “Take Action” tab. As 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg said, “The one thing we need more than hope is action.”

– Andrew Zeiler, Durango

To the editor,

Here in La Plata County, we buy almost all of our power from Tri-State, a generation and transmission company based on the Front Range.

Tri-State relies heavily on fossil fuels, and they are the single-worst emitter of carbon dioxide in the entire country per unit of energy produced. Maybe that made sense years before, when coal was the cheapest energy source, but it doesn’t anymore.

The cost of renewable energy has plummeted, and the price of coal is high and rising. Coal has never made sense environmentally. Now, it doesn’t even make sense economically.

The advantages of renewables are clear. Lower prices and cleaner energy benefit us all.

Jeff Mannix (D2) and Jack Turner (D4) are the best choice for people who want LPEA directors that will advocate for clean energy and low rates. They both have strong backgrounds in community advocacy and will push the board to examine all of LPEA’s options, instead of just blindly tethering themselves to dirty, expensive energy.

Ballots were mailed April 2. Please vote for Turner and Mannix.

– Brett Oliver, Durango

To the editor,

Here’s the latest twist in the never-ending sage of Red McCombs Village at Wolf Creek pipe-dream. Seems that Friends of Wolf Creek got tired of waiting for their legitimate FOIA request to be honored. Nothing had been handed over, although the deadline had passed well over 200 days earlier.

Now a U.S. Magistrate has stepped in to order the Forest Service to start releasing those papers. This has the usual suspects all up in arms about how poor old McCombs’ is being abused by out of control environmentalists.

“There is a law that says the USFS has to grant access to inholdings,” ... McCombs has a sacred property-owners’ right to develop that land if he wants, curses to those damned environmentalists for playing legal hardball.

There is another side to this story. As it happens We the People firmly believe this is a property rights dispute. Our property was stolen from us, and we have an ethical duty to fight tooth and nail with every legal tool at our disposal until that property gets back to its rightful owner, the American people via the Rio Grande National Forest.

After all, Red’s claim is totally based on manipulating a law that was intended for completely different circumstances. You see, among many other things, in 1980 ANILCA was created for property owners who suddenly found themselves in a landlocked “inholding” because of a newly created national park or other federally designated area.

In the 1980s, McCombs (with pals LMJV) purchased three middle-of-nowhere San Luis Valley foothill parcels that the Forest Service had been eyeing in order to pretty up map boundaries (seriously). McCombs then engaged in those go-go ‘80s national forest real estate poker games hoping to parlay those low-value parcels for a bonanza at the heart of the Wolf Creek drainage basin, near Wolf Creek Ski Area.

It didn’t matter to him that Alberta Park was an integral part of the Wolf Creek watershed and protected for the general good of the American people since 1908.

All McCombs could see was profits, totally oblivious to what an amazing biological keystone this piece of unadulterated wetlands and ancient fens wilderness was for the greater Wolf Creek watershed and the Rio Grande River for that matter. Ecological balance, environmental concerns, nurturing our wildlands – all those considerations Red’s developers and boosters laugh off as hippy devil talk.

Back to Red’s real estate poker game: he lost in Colorado. State and regional Forest Service officials concluded his was a bad bet for the health of the Rio Grande National Forest and river and they roundly rejected LMJV’s land swap offer.

But, Red held a trump card, billionaires own politicians, so back in the “real world” of Washington D.C., deep in the bowels of the USDA, papers were fixed, and presto, Red got his land swap.

Now his enablers are again pulling out their standard GOP victim card, crying foul because the poor guy is having to put up with yet more of these never-ending legal hurdles. Cry me a river. Red’s a billionaire and We are the People. Deal with it.

McCombs has been dishonest from the get go, such as telling everyone he wanted a few luxury cabins. After the deal was in, his plans blossomed to 10,000 people worth of luxury homes. Well, Red got caught and he got stopped. Here’s one for the American way.

Just because others got away with it, is no reason for us to let Red get away with his atrocious dream of destroying Alberta Park’s ancient watershed and fens, which building hundreds of homes and businesses on top of certainly will do, no matter how many berms you bulldoze into place for show.

We warned McCombs decades ago, his intentions were ill considered, destructive, unethical and bound to arouse deep moral indignation, antipathy and opposition among Colorado citizens and taxpayers. But will they ever learn?

Unfortunately, it seems to have evolved from a desired speculative business deal to an angry, old, richer-than-god guy, who’d rather get even than learn some lessons and admit maybe he was wrong and enough is enough.

Leave Alberta Park and Wolf Creek alone!

– Peter Miesler, friend of Alberta Park, No-village atwolfcreek.blogspot.com