Wow! Really, Mark Z? Internet connection for every person in the world? I know that’s your field, BUT… How about using that astonishing brain of yours to figure out how to provide every person on the planet with some of the more basic human needs first…like sufficient FOOD and clean WATER? Or maybe ELECTRICITY, BASIC HEALTHCARE and GOOD SANITATION?
Archive for December, 2014
Global Internet Access? Huh?
Posted in MLRowland, tagged clean water, Facebook, global issues, Mark Zuckerberg, Poverty, Time Magazine on December 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »
A Call to Action from Robert Redford
Posted in Environmental Issues, MLRowland, Nature, tagged Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Canyon Country, Canyonlands National Park, Conservation, Environmentalism, Greater Canyonlands, Robert Redford, Utah on December 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »
![](https://i0.wp.com/cf-resrc.outsideonline.com/C=W100P,H100P/S=W800,U/O=90,P/http://media.outsideonline.com/images/canyonlands-robert-redford_h.jpg)
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2014
Let’s Finish the Job: Designate a Canyonlands National Monument
It’s been a national park for 50 years. One more step will ensure that it’s safe forever.
Now some of those unprotected places are threatened by the surge in U.S. energy development. One park entrance is already marred by a major oil well, and formerly wide-open vistas are littered with pump jacks and drill rigs.
It’s time to protect these special places—and honor the original vision for the park—once and for all. President Obama can create the Greater Canyonlands National Monument using the same Antiquities Act that Republican and Democratic presidents used to establish four out of five of Utah’s national parks.
With this monument, we can finish what was started 50 years ago.
Just two years after Canyonlands National Park was created, I spent months traveling around red rock country filming Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There is a reason the film won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography: Much of it benefited from the spectacular vermilion sandstone of southern Utah as a backdrop.
A rugged territory of canyons and river gorges, Greater Canyonlands is an expanse of wilderness like no other. This is one of the largest roadless areas left in the lower 48 states—somewhere you can wander for days without a glimpse of pavement or telephone poles, a place of outlaws and visionaries. Butch Cassidy himself is said to have hidden in its canyon mazes. Edward Abbey called it “the most weird, wonderful, magical place on earth—there is nothing else like it anywhere.”
Standing at Dead Horse Point high above the Colorado River and looking out over the panorama of high mesas, deep canyon walls, and orange and pink rock formations sculpted by wind and water, it’s easy to see that the park boundaries failed to capture all the region’s natural treasures. Straight lines arbitrarily cutting across meandering rivers and ridgelines encompass only a portion of the living heart of red rock country.
That leaves the land around the park increasingly under siege from rampant oil and gas development, potash mining, and potential strip mines for tar sands oil—the dirtiest fuel on earth. Drilling activity has increased so much outside the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands National Park that Moab residents have dubbed it “Oil Land in the Sky.”
The idea of drill pads, gas flares, and pipelines crisscrossing this glorious landscape is obscene. Wild places are an essential part of our American spirit. They belong to all of us, and we must protect them from reckless and polluting industries.
The time is now. As Canyonlands National Park celebrates its 50th anniversary and the Centennial of the National Park Service approaches in 2016, President Obama can fulfill the original vision for the park by preserving the entirety of this landscape for good.
This will not only safeguard a place of stunning beauty but also build on a distinctly American tradition—one carried on by both political parties and both state and national leaders—of conserving the wild places that sustain our nation’s rugged and independent character. Greater Canyonlands is one of them. Let’s protect it now.
– See more at: http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/nature/Lets-Finish-the-Job-Designate-a-Canyonlands-National-Monument.html#sthash.PqcT7dcS.dpuf (more…)
Land Grab!
Posted in Environmental Issues, MLRowland, Nature, tagged Conservation, Environmental activism, National Parks, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Utah land grab on December 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »
The “land grab” attempt by local and state governments FROM land we ALL own (Federal) is real, in progress, and a serious threat to some of my favorite areas of the country (and I’ve seen a LOT of it!). This is NOT hyperbole.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance’s new television commercial airs throughout Utah beginning December 1, 2014. Please share with friends and support the ad campaign through a tax-deductible contribution here: http://bit.ly/StopUTLandGrab
Utah Thanksgiving
Posted in Environmental Issues, Inspirational, MLRowland, Photography, tagged Bluff, Canyon Country, Capitol Reef National Park, San Juan County, Utah on December 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »
For over fifteen years, my husband, Mark, and I have been traveling to Utah with friends for Thanksgiving. What better way to celebrate and give thanks for this most fabulous world in which we live!
This year’s trip included hikes in Grand Wash and Capitol Gorge inside Capitol Reef National Park and the outstanding canyon country around Bluff in southeastern Utah.
Enjoy!