This morning, Denver Business Journal sent me an email advertisement:
Special Section:
Sustainable Colorado
The Denver Business Journal is proud to feature a new series exploring economic sustainability in Colorado and its impact on the business community. Sustainable Colorado will feature an array of topics from the cost and benefit of “going green” to emerging technologies in all industry sectors. We’ll take a look at the efforts being done to incorporate environmentally sustainable practices in businesses that will help strengthen the environmental health of our region.
I responded to them:
“I would hope some editor or journalist on your staff has the foresight to include mining, forestry, and landfills as part of the necessary industries to Colorado’s economy that need to be managed by green-friendly methods. These industries are part of our human condition, part of our daily consumption, they are industries that address our existence in this mountain state and we Coloradoans dismiss them as some kind of nasty mess when what we need to do is embrace them as part of our “sustainable existence” and manage them within green-criteria.”
Now, we will see what they have to say about that. We’ll see if their perception of “the business community” includes the hard-core industries that contribute to Colorado economy by the millions of dollars, or if their concept of the business community are retail stores, food services, and tourism.
In my personal opinion, nothing is more environmentally responsible than knowing where your trash, poop, and other waste is going, and where your resources, energy, building materials, clean water are coming from. Addressing these very real factors of human existence within a confined habitat (a city) is true enlightenment, true responsibility, and true sustainability.
To say, “I don’t like mines (land fills, forestry… etc.)” is as juvenile as not eating your peas or in more modern times, not picking up after your dog has left a pile in a municipal park. We need to manage our resources and that means embracing these industries as an extension of our sustainability.
{ 2 } Comments
Michele;
Please don’t hold your breath while waiting for some journalist to present a fair and balanced story on mining, forestry, land fills, clean water, clean air, or any other topic. Most journalists, print or network, have an inflated ego and actually believe that their reporting is correct, even when it’s obvious they know nothing of the subject. The nation needs journalists like submarines need screen doors.
Gee Al,
Maybe you are reading too much High Country News? You and I are both journalists,too, in that we write journals. I don’t know if my head is completely up my Beautiful Underlying Treed Terrain, but I am willing to consider it may be. Perhaps we have been brainwashed by the mining industry? Maybe everything we write about is contrite and biased in favor of the big cog?
All I know is that when it comes to economic sustainability in Colorado, I don’t think we are going to make much headway without embracing our large industries, and that means mining, petroleum, and forestry.
BTW — their editor has yet to get back to me.
Thank you,
Michele
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