HEAL Utah is an environmental NGO which was originally formed as a self-defense group against pollution, and branched out from there to fight for renewable energy and against nuclear power and other issues. On Dec 12 2015 they did something which I consider correct and courageous. At a time when everybody calls for gun control, they interviewed (in a friendly, favorable way) the conservative Gun Rights Advocate Janalee Tobias because she is also engaged in environmental struggles. A podcast of the interview is at
http://www.healutah.org/conservative-environmentalist/ Janalee has conducted and is continuing to conduct amazing battles trying to preserve open space at the Jordan River in Utah. This river is a unique wetland and bird habitat which was misused and degraded for many decades as sewer and industrial waste dump, and whose flood plain is now being "rehabilitated", i.e., sacrificed to economic growth, by the construction of office parks and condominiums or apartments. I have lived in SLC since 1985, and have been active in the environmental movement since 2006, but only in 2011 did I hear for the first time about the heroic environmental battle fought by the two Mormon women Janalee Tobias and Judy Feld. This battle is chronicled in the 2013 book "Slapped!: A Novel Based on a True Story" by Paul Swenson, a local investigative journalist. This is a novel, but everything in this book is based on true events except the names of the actors. It also gives great insights into the workings of the Mormon community. The comments on the amazon web site http://www.amazon.com/Slapped-Novel-Based-True-Story/dp/149180176X give a good summary. I read the book from beginning to end, because it is such a gripping and enlightening read, and because these two women were so incredibly creative. This story could only be told because Janalee and Judy did not back down in court despite having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. They showed by example that money does not trump everything, and this book also puts a spotlight on the forms of corruption which develop so easily at the shady interface between environment and business. By putting this interview on their web site, HEAL signals that the destruction of nature for profit, whether it be local wetlands or the entire climate system, is a bipartisan issue. Clearly, this is not only true in Utah. The importance of talking to conservatives is also stressed in George Marshall's blog posting "Get Radical -- Engaging Conservatives About Climate Change" at http://climatedenial.org/2015/05/06/get-radical-engaging-conservatives-about-climate-change-1 Hans G Ehrbar _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
