naked cap: Criminalizing Peaceful Pipeline Protests: Are Oil Billionaires Trying to Undermine Our First Amendment Rights?

Butofcourse they are. What did you expect? But they're not going to like how citizens deal with being silenced. Very ignorant, short-term pocketbook thinking from people who don't live in these areas. Here in the West, both Democratic and Republican ideologues are weapons-bearers, and NIMBY is just as powerful. 

Just sayin'. You companies better off learning to deal with protest - the alternatives will be decidedly worse. Look at the Bundys, for a recent example. Peaceful protests are hard to manage, sure. But armed ones, with self-righteous angry folk, are another kettle of fish. And it's not clear your bills will stand up in Federal courts.

Guardian.UK: It's 50 years since climate change was first seen. Now time is running out.

I hate to say it, but our only hope may be an epidemic. I would be very surprised if certain countries aren't already working in this vein (dump an engineered virus on another country, vaccinate 'ours').

There is no self-control among industrialized nations. Nothing will work until we control population.

(Sorry, but by the end of each news week, I get more and more cynical. A part of me says I shouldn't even think this stuff, because somehow someone else will twig on these ideas and run with them.)

DP Review: The Broccoli Tree and the dangers of sharing photos of the places you love online.

The truth is, if we hoard and hide what we love, we can still lose it. Only then, we're alone in the loss. You can't un-saw a tree, but you can't un-see one either. The Broccoli Tree is gone... but it's beauty, survives.

You, my readers, will see the fallacy. Sheer numbers make this incorrect. We see this all over Santa Fe; the marketing of every single 'best kept secret' and 'locals only' spot has resulted in overlove, overpopulation, and destruction of natural areas. If one kept it quiet, exposure to 100 versus 100,000?

I'll show you photos, but I won't always tell you where I am. Not that I don't trust my readership; this blog is open to the wider internet. All I need is some NewMexicoTrue fool to swoop in and broadcast some of my places.

We're already contending with at least one Instagrammer revealing one of our favorite locations, bringing out-of-staters with MTBs to tear up some spots (I don't mind MTBers in general, but the fools who show up here start shifting trails and moving rocks so they don't have to lift their fat asses off their saddles, causing all sorts of problems in rainy season). Posts images of a perfected Santa Fe experience, that one cannot reach without significant $$$.

Santa Fe for Santa Feans first.

Ars Technica: Drone crashes in Arizona National Forest, starts a wildfire.

A vector of risk I hadn't thought of. Given our drought status, drones and forests may end up being a deadly mix. I'd recommend operators have buckets, shovels, and a 5 gallon container of water available, but likely not even that would be enough given how tinder-dry we are. A ban might be in order over BLM and National Forest land. You'll piss off the social media 'influencers', but who cares? It's the landscape we must live in and with.

NY Times: Oil Was Central in Decision to Shrink Bears Ears Monument, Emails Show.

... remove land that contained oil and natural gas deposits that had been set aside to help fund public schools.

Note my frequent observation - kids as political lever. If Utah kids protested for Bear Ears, what then? Senator Hatch might have an aneurysm.

I still believe it was more a uranium play than an oil and gas one. Notice not even a mention of uranium here. Simply because covering oil and gas hides the other, more politically-toxic agenda - note the language ("resolve all known mineral conflicts"). Oil and gas won't supply revenues immediately. Uranium will. But now I sound like a crank conspiracy theorist to my own ears, so I'll shut up now.

Reuters: U.S. Supreme Court rejects challenge to EPA water regulation.

They said no permits should be required because water is merely being transferred from one place to another and pollutants are not being added.

And if the water from body A is polluted, and B is not? What then? Doing the right thing costs money sometimes. Most honorable people bite the bullet and do what's right. Apparently not our government.

​Bicycling: Two Arrested for Building Illegal Mountain-Bike Trail in Indianapolis Nature Preserve.

Not a great idea. Local bicyclists have been gradually 'modifying' some local trails - even to the point of shoving huge boulders around - so they don't have to get their asses off their bikes and climb over obstacles.

Count me as 'opponent' when bikers do this. I enjoy bike access myself, but I would never start altering the landscape. If bikers can't behave, I accept whatever limitations parks apply.

Mother Nature needs all the allies she can get, right now.