Friday, 18 November 2011

{Political_Views} Fwd: Fw: Save the Grand Canyon

The Colorado river supplies most of the drinking water and all of the irrigation water for Southern Nevada, Southern California and Arizona. Yet for the want of money and profit people want to pollute it. Imagine this Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angles, San Diego, Palm Springs and every town in between as ghost towns. Every inch of farm land that grows crops much of which is sent to all parts of this country unfarmable. Almost 75 million people forced to move. Can your mind even comprehend this vision?





"A Uranium Mine Just Around the Bend? NO!"

 

"They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot."

 

Well, that's almost right.  They don't want to pave paradise.  They want to mine it.

 

Here are two phrases that you probably never expected to see in the same sentence:  "the Grand Canyon" and "uranium mines."

 

Two years ago, the Obama Administration realized that new uranium mining in Arizona could destroy the Grand Canyon, and the Colorado River flowing through it.  So it issued a proposed rule to prevent that.  The rule would prevent uranium mining in an area equivalent to forty miles long and forty miles wide, which is smaller than the Grand Canyon itself.

 

380,000 people submitted comments to the Obama Administration.  Well over 90% of the comments were in favor of the proposed rule.

 

We're talking about the Grand Canyon here.  One of the Wonders of the World.  Seventeen million years old.  Five million visitors a year.

 

And the Colorado River.  Ten million people use it for recreation each year.  It provides water to millions of people.

 

But the mining companies don't care.  They want to build a mine wherever they want.  And there are Members of Congress who want whatever the mining companies want.

 

So they introduced H.R. 3155, which would handcuff the Obama Administration, and let the uranium miners run wild.  And now the battle is joined.

 

Here is the worst part.  It's not like anyone has to guess how this story ends.  There already is a uranium mine near the Colorado River, upstream in Utah.   That mine has produced 16 million tons of radioactive debris.  The taxpayers are spending $720 million to move that radioactive debris away from the river.

 

Can't we learn from our mistakes?  Or at least avoid bigger ones?  "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?"

 

Arizona's Congressman Raul Grijalva knows what we've got, and he doesn't want it gone.  He is leading the fight against H.R. 3155.  At a hearing a week ago, he systematically laid out the arguments in favor of protecting the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River.  And he exposed the fact that one witness who claimed to be an objective scientist stands to make a fortune if the mining goes ahead.

 

We have to do something about this.  Help save the Grand Canyon.  Sign Rep. Grijalva's petition; click here.  So that the Grand Canyon can survive – for the next 17 million years.

 

Courage,

 

Alan Grayson

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot 
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot 
Don't it always seem to go 
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone 
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot 

They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum 
And then they charged all the people twenty-five bucks just to see 'em 
Don't it always seem to go 
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone 
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

 

Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi" (1970)

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