26 July, 2007


We sat around the table watching a hearty handful of 60 year old farm owners yelling about the rapidly raising property taxes in Madison County. I took another sip of wine and listened to my former mentor explain the fine tuned qualiteies of falsely raising the value of property. One private land owner sells the property for said price. The new owner then doubles the price to the next said and arranged buyer. This goes on until land in Spring Creek is $50,000 an acre. My former mentor raised her voice along with her arms. The energy in the room got more and more chaotic and I began to feel ill with the reality of subdivisions and gated communities covering the ridgelines of a county that nobody gave a hoooot about less than a decade ago.
I was also feeling ill due to the negative output, thus countered with a proactive,
"What can we do as a solution?"
No one answered me.
Well that isn't true...Judy had an idea about turning ones land into a national trust so our farms become parks after we die. I am thinking about this...

This morning I went down to the Arts Counsel and signed up as a volunteer. I may not be a breadwinner, but I am a one for civic participation. It takes all kinds does it not?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've pretty much heard it all with regard to global warming. Theories about global warming run the gamut from "there is no appreciable change in the climate" to "it's already too late and we're all going to die".

As an average Joe, I have more important things to do than spend hour upon hour doing all the necessary research to be informed enough to come to my own well-reasoned scientific conclusions. Sorry folks. I have a real life to worry about. Instead I'm going to just do make a prediction.

The whole hoopla over global warming will be forgotten in ten years. It is nothing more than over hyped bunk.

I say this because there is a lot of talking and political positioning about global warming, but no one is doing anything significant to actually combat it. If it really is true and completely agreed upon and the debate is truly over, as some people in high positions claim (I'm looking in your direction Al Gore.), then the only next step is to take the measures needed to stop CO2 emissions or prepare for the inevitable.

Anonymous said...

Hey there Natasha, its Joe from Flag,

Can you post a picture of yourself in a Bikini?

NATASHA SHEALY-natasha@thenoise.us said...

Joe, if it were to stop raining i might just do that, though it totally out of context...

Anonymous said...

Yea Baby, show me the thong!

Anonymous said...

Hey there Tahs,

Fran form Flagstaff.

You dont have to listen to them baby. Be yourself.

Anonymous said...

how does "a lot of talking and political positioning about global warming, but no one is doing anything significant to actually combat it" translate into evidence that climate change is overhyped bunk? When have you ever seen political institutions do anything different? The only group of people that are really in a solid position to know whether climate chnage is bunk are scientists who study climate change. They have the data and information in hand. How many of these people do you know? I've known quite a few over the last 10 years or so, in fact I am a climate change scientist from time to time. THERE HAS BEEN NO REAL DEBATE AMONG SCIENTISTS ABOUT WHETHER CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING OR WHETHER IT IS HUMAN CAUSED FOR OVER A DECADE. IT IS BY A LONG SHOT THE MOST LIKELY EXPLANATION OF WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. This raging debate is a fabrication of those who feel threatened in the short term by the reality of climate change: the producers of fossil fuel electricity, oil, automobiles, every entity that has ever outsourced jobs to less industrialized nations to do shit that would be percieved as environmentally irresponsible if it were done here in the US. A considerable portion of our many headed government essentially works for these same entities (ever heard the phrase "american interests"?) therefore they promote the myth of the global warming debate. The mass media do not represent corporate America, they ARE corporate america. They have the same shareholders and parent companies as oil, auto, agribusiness, etc and their purpose is to make money by selling advertising, not to inform the public. Information is a product they sell. And they can sell misinformation like the raging global warming debate, and advertisers will buy anyway, and they can protect "american (read: their own) interests". This is why no one in this nation appears to be doing anything significant about it, not becasue climate change is overhyped bunk. Dude, do you really need more evidence that things are unusual? The North Pole melted! The Ross ice shelf is melting. I bet evryone you know, regardless of where they live has experienced weather conditions different from long term averages in the last decade, i.e. more drought years than avergae years in flagstaff, more hurricanes in the gulf, and warmer winters in the antarctic and high arctic, and greater variability in most places. Why would everywhere be experiencing wierd weather if there was not something very unusual happening at a global scale.
Now that has been said it is worth pointing out that predicting the outcome of climate chnage is what is hard and where debate occurs. In fact this very question consumes a considerbale portion of science funding in both the US and EU (turns out not all the heads of our goverments are up the many asses of our governments, just most). All we know to prepare for is change, we are still wondering what the change will look like. One mode of action that is obvious and necessary is to reduce what is causing the problem, huge human-associated carbon sources and damage to major carbon sinks. But this simple fact has not translated into political action here (it has in the EU and most nations of the world) because doing something is tantamount to telling Americans they can not live like they do anymore. Climate chnage is your "real life" and doing the necessary research to undertsand this problem and make choices in your own life is your obligation to humanity, which of course includes yourself and every still living person you have ever cared about. Dont look to the governmnet for clues about what is correct, moral, or necessary. Arm yourself with unpolluted information and you will see what has to happen in our nation to make this problem hurt less.

NATASHA SHEALY-natasha@thenoise.us said...

Does it make you feel better to believe our climate has not changed?
Perhaps it is just a cycle, or maybe the drastic emmissions dumped into the atmosphere do have an effect. If something like second hand smoke can make you feel like shit, how can can chemical pollutants of toxic contents not effect change in our health and environment?

NATASHA SHEALY-natasha@thenoise.us said...

Interesting that this same comment is posted on Under the Concrete, my pal Kyle's blog. Now what is a Federale doing reading our blogs?

NATASHA SHEALY-natasha@thenoise.us said...

who likes liberals anyway?