|
CounterPunch
February
25, 2003
Environmental Activism
as Homeland Security
The Fallout
Over Utah
by CRAIG AXFORD
My family moved from Massachusetts to Utah County
when I was 5. I couldn't articulate at the time the impression
the 11,000-foot peaks of Mount Timpanogos and Mount Nebo and
the rest of the Wasatch Front made on me. As a boy used to roaming
the beaches of Cape Cod, I was immediately impressed.
Eastern forests of second growth maples
and oaks obscured my view beyond a hundred yards. The desert
valleys and forested mountains of Utah offered views for distances
I hadn't imagined, and could not comprehend even as I beheld
them. It did not take long for me to fall in love with Utah.
Within two years I dragged my father
along for a hike up a small canyon at the base of Timpanogos
just south of the "G" printed on the slope behind Pleasant
Grove. Dad was not an outdoor type, and we returned after sunset
late at night to find the search and rescue assembling near our
home with mother in tears, anticipating the worst.
Our late return worried me far less than
it had my mother. Dad was just glad the hike was over.
Needless to say, all hikes were done
with my older brother in the future, and included trips to the
summit of Timpanogos, with its commanding view of the valley
below. I had found a home, and my love for my home eventually
led me into environmental activism.
Naively, I assumed others shared a similar
response to limestone and granite mountains, spruce, fir, and
ponderosa forests, and red rock canyons with ancient images of
bighorn sheep and hunters chiseled or painted into their walls.
The Cold War was raging, but I had no
awareness of the nuclear bomb testing still going on below ground
in Nevada, upwind from the wind-swept hillsides I loved to explore.
Cancer was something that naturally happened to older people,
and I was sure my family and friends were immune to it for years
to come.
No one spoke of the chemical weapons
stored even closer to home, and the open-air tests conducted
by the military at Dugway were either unknown to my family or
were not discussed because these were considered a military necessity,
given the Communist menace lurking on the other side of the globe.
The idea Utah could be a target was as
unimaginable to me as the mountains had been to the Massachusetts
boy when he arrived a few years before.
In high school a new term entered my
vocabulary, "downwinder." The cancer death of former
Utah Gov. Scott Matheson was linked to this word, and it was
then that I learned what it meant. Within a matter of years I
heard of several family members and friends who had experienced
thyroid problems, including cancer. All were older, but none
were much older than my parents. By the time I married and began
to raise a family, the stories were more numerous and legislation
was making its way through Congress to compensate the "victims"
of nuclear testing.
The natural beauty of my home was subject
to other assaults as well. A visit to the Targhee National Forest
in southeastern Idaho exposed me to my first timber clearcuts,
and an article about a Utah legislator regarding his proposal
to reduce the penalty for poaching mountain lions -- an animal
long ago extirpated in the East -- raised my ire. My home was
not only a target, but was being taken for granted by those elected
to serve it.
For me, environmental activism is an
act of homeland security. I am one of a small percentage of Americans
lucky enough to have put down roots. My wife and I bought a home
shortly after we married, and while we have discussed moving,
the Intermountain West has always been the focus of those discussions.
In all likelihood we could never leave Utah for long.
Proposals to ship high-level nuclear
waste just down the highway from my home, or to accept hotter
radioactive waste at the Envirocare facility, also just off Interstate
80, are proposals I take very personally. Reading Forest Service
descriptions of old growth as "decadent" trees that
must be removed to save the forest from the natural processes
that created it make me angry.
Environmental activism for me is about
protecting my home. I don't want one more generation of Utahns,
including my daughter, to live unwittingly downwind. I don't
want the public lands we all own to be lost to the chainsaw,
the oil well or industrial tourism.
Securing the homeland to me means passing
at least some of what makes Utah beautiful and unique on to my
daughter, and ensuring not one more species is lost. And perhaps
a few, like the wolf, can even be restored.
Craig Axford
ran for congress on the Green Party ticket. He works for the
Utah Environmental Congress.
Yesterday's
Features
Jeffrey St. Clair
In
a Land Where Justice is a Game: Killing Amos King
Anne Gwynne
Raid
on Nablus: a Hero in the Midst of Horror
Nelson P. Valdés
Why Americans Can't Travel to Cuba
Jason Leopold
Martin Peretz to Bush: Bomb Iraq
Alan Maass
"A Revolutionary Spirit in a Hostile World":
The Real Martin Luther King, Jr
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens and Booze
Sonia Ebron
Why
Black Americans Should Oppose Bush's War
Russell Mokiber and Robert
Weissman
12
Reasons to Oppose Bush's War on Iraq
Abu Spinoza
Chomsky's Power and Terror
Website of the Day
Bush
AWOL
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
February 22
/ 23, 2003
Laura Flanders
Security Threat?
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey Barred Entry to US
Alexander Cockburn
The Trouble with E-Bombs
Kathy Kelly
Letter from Baghdad
Tight Squeeze
Subcomandate
Marcos
A Universal
No to the War of Fear
William Cook
Armageddon Anxiety
Jo Freeman
Conservative Women
Michael Colby
Howard Dean is No Green
Ben Tripp
Fact-Checking the Constitution
Joanne Mariner
Pets Unite!
Richard Falk and David Krieger
Iraq and the Failures of Democracy
Uri Avnery
War Crimes and Sharon
Ian Williams
John Bolton in Jerusalem
Michael Wolff
How Sanctions Destroyed Iraqi Education
William Hughes
The Zev and Ari Show
Susanna Sonnenberg
Boxing Missoula
Michael Ortiz Hill
Peace and Humility
Anis Shivani
When Kafka Aligns with Orwell
John Mihelich
The Hidden History of Butte's
Working Class
Rich Procter
Bush and His Fabled Gut
Adam Engel
Voice of the Nation
Becky Johnson
The Hopscotch Rebellion
Krieger, Tripp, Ashley
Poets' Basement
Website of
the Weekend
The
Pedro Martinez of Palestine
February 15
/ 16, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Colin
Powell and the Great "Intelligence Fraud"
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
The Whole World is Watching
Edward Said
A Monumental Hypocrisy
Wouter Hijink
Report from Amsterdam
"War: Do Not Feed!"
Linda Heard
At Last! Proud to be British
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Taking a Stand on Iraq
Robert Fisk
The Case Against War
Lev Grinberg
Lessons from Israel
A War Without Legitimacy
Chris Floyd
Cold Fronts:
Bush War Profits
Ahmad Faruqui
Stepping Back from the Brink of War
Norman Madarasz
French Kisses from the Citizens of France
Adam Lebowitz
Scott Ritter in Tokyo
Kurt Nimmo
Bring Us the Head of Osama bin Laden
Forrest Hylton
The Revolt in Bolivia
Col. Dan Smith
Irrelevance and Credibility:
Bush, NATO and the UN
Wayne Madsen
The Lies of Tom Lantos
Ranjit Hoskote
The Invisible Modernities of the Islamic World
Emily Zitter-Smith
Who's Safe Now?
An American in Cairo
Rich Procter
Anybody Remember the Powell Doctrine?
Poets Basement:
Eliot
Katz, Scott Handleman, and Bruce Tomczak
Website of the Weekend
Anti-War
Posters
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|