Urban Ecoist

This is interesting to me, not because Robert Redford is involved or that gas companies are funding the protesters, but because this exemplifies the contentious relationship between society and wilderness, the urban and the ecoist.

I have tried to bring to your attention to Bush’s attempt to sell off parts of the Utah wildlands to oil and gas companies — well, not sell, but lease at bargain prices, so that the oil and gas companies can make billions off of publicly owned minerals.

Why do poor New Yorkers hate Utah so much?

A group called the Congress of Racial Equality has set up camp in Utah just in time for the Sundance Film Festival in order to call out Robert Redford and his protests of the Bush Landgrab Auction. CoRE’s stance is that by protesting the sale of mineral rights for some of Utah, Robert Redford hates poor urban people.

CoRE believes that by not allowing the natural gas companies drill in Utah, prices will increase for Grandma on Social Security back in New York City. That may seem like a simplified version of the protest, but I have only broke it down into its real merits. Granted, fuel prices will rise this winter season, but not because Robert Redford is helping an environmental group urge Obama to overturn the late lame duck actions that did end up getting passed.

I am all for equality and environmental justice, but I gotta say that CoRE is off its rocker. To even surmise that Robert Redford or any opposition to drilling or mining is what is driving up fuel costs is so unbelievably wrong that it is almost laughable. CoRE would be better serving its members and those it claims to defend by protesting the oil and gas companies for making so much money off the backs of the poor. CoRE should be protesting outgoing (hallelujah and praise the lord) President[sic] Bush for allowing Big Oil, Big Gas and Big Coal from running rampant during his two ungodly long terms and make all those billions on substances that already lie beneath public lands. Not only that but CoRE should be protesting the whole system of a government that will pump so many dollars of subsidies into the fossil fuel industries so as to skew the cost of those fuels so low that no other fuel source can compete cost-wise — until those fuels start running out after causing catastrophic damage to the ecosystem.

Yeah, maybe you should look at your actions, CoRE. Is it really Redford that is using his fame to preserve Utah so he can “look at the scenery” or is it CoRE that is using Redford’s fame to push the agenda of ExxonMobil, a major funding source for CoRE’s operations?

protests, Utah, lease, mineral rights, wilderness, Robert Redford, Sundance, natural gas, festival, Congress of Racial Equality, Exxon, ExxonMobil, oil, gas, coal, mining, drilling, fossil fuels, heating costs, environmental justice