Letter: The preservation of life is not what our leaders are fighting for
(Photo courtesy of the Summit Land Conservancy) The last piece of working agriculture in Utah’s Synderville Basin, the Osguthorpe farm could soon be protected from development under an $18 million deal overseen by the Summit Land Conservancy. A federal grant is covering half the price, but the public must cover the rest. Despite a $3.9 million mark-down by the Osguthorpe family, the land conservancy remains $800,000 short just three weeks in front of its March 31 deadline to complete the transaction.
Given that our financial and political leaders are, it has become obvious, committing suicide competitively, with marketing for money as the primary motivator, it is also obvious that the rest of us really must seize control.
If not for ourselves, we have to do this on behalf of the history of life and of all the other living beings on the planet. Statewide gathering of hydrocarbons and minerals; ‘inland port’; the Trumpian catalog of nauseating abuses: It’s all seemingly on the way, at the hands of local governments, state legislatures and agencies, and the current feds.
God only knows on what the few newly-rich will spend all that money, but clearly, there is no intention of spending it on the long-term, macro-scale preservation of life, much less on the quality of life that some of us fantasize is possible (or remember, in a few cases).
A smoking, stinking cinder is not my idea of an appropriate end to four or five billion years of life on Earth!
Ivan Weber, Salt Lake City
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