If Rio Tinto can simultaneously boast in its Sunday, Nov. 20, full-page ad, "The copper exhibit is on the outside," about the 100,000 pounds of copper it ripped out of the Oquirrh mountains (emitting enormous volumes of air pollution) to sheath the new Natural History Museum of Utah at the Rio Tinto Center, and enthuse about the museum's "sustainability," we either need to upend our definition of that word or jettison it altogether for having been emptied of all meaning.

Rio Tinto wants to make sure we take special notice of the superfluous copper "exhibit" on the building's exterior. Gleaming regally in the evening sun, this "exhibit's" message is luminously clear: vanity and power.

It's unfortunate that the museum accepted Rio Tinto's lucre, allowing itself in the process to serve as a billboard for unadulterated corporate propaganda — "copperwashing" in this case. The growing practice of capture-through-sponsorship of places of assembly by the biggest corporate polluters speaks volumes about both the evisceration of the public sphere and the reigning power structure in our society.

Jonathan Jensen

Salt Lake City