camp: Jackpot, Nevada
context: We spent the day before in Baker, Nevada, a tiny town with one
intersection, no grocery store and no stoplight. Baker is home to groundwater
that is desperately wanted by Las Vegas to feed their growing city, so a
pipeline has been proposed. Senator Harry Reid is very in favor of the
pipeline, given that he needs urban votes to get re-elected.
There
is so much political intrigue here. I wish Nevada had a better Democrat than
Harry Reid, someone who didn’t have an interest in gold mining, someone who
cared about the land. He’s a politician to the core, and I suppose he’d have to
be to be Senate Majority Leader, but I can’t help but think that his principles
are largely based on majority rule in his electorate, not actual principles.
That makes him so political, and I suppose it’s not a bad thing necessarily. He
stalls Yucca Mountain more out of NIMBY than any true environmentalism, because
if he cared about the earth or public lands much, he’d stop gold mining and the
Las Vegas pipeline. Utilitarianism would dictate that the line be built, I
think—how many people live in the area in question? But utilitarianism of that
sort ignores non-humans and the fact that cities in deserts aren’t sustainable.
I’ve heard it argued that even cities aren’t sustainable, though I’m not
entirely convinced. But Ed Abbey had it down. There’s no shortage of water in
the desert unless you try to build a city where no city should be.
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