. . . Literal ashes, far too many, darken
the Navajo sky. Our civilization, soaring to power by using up
its environmental capital, now exports its power-plant pollution
to what were the clean skies of the southwest. To have taken
the land was not enough; the air must be taken too, so that the
Los Angeles basin, Central Arizona, and Las Vegas could force
their roots out farther still, grow insatiably, and damn the
expense as long as it wasn't theirs. And as long as it could
be denied that there was a cost. I heard guides at the Four Corners
and Black Mesa strip mines tell
the same story as they excused the burial of soil eons in the
making under the dead rock that had lain over the coal they are
converting to kilowatts and fly ash: "We are bringing new
nutrients to the top."
This is an overachievement in creative
PR that we can do without. One of the high costs of electricity
is that it lets us see far too few stars. It is now taking the
stars away from people who have barely enough electricity to
let a scratchy tape recorder repeat Waylon Jennings:
And it echoed through the canyon
like the disappearin' dream
of yesterday.
There is other music too. Perhaps we
can be quieter now and then and listen.
