Correction: The fourth-place winner in the Best of Boulder category “Best Nederland Restaurant” should have been listed as Sundance Café.
Great stuff last week
(Re: Savage Love, April 25.) Great column. Keep it going.
Great investigative journalism by Joel Dyer (“State ‘promotes’ natural-gas catastrophe that now threatens Colorado River,” DyerTimes April 25).
Otherwise how would we know? Now, what to do about it?
Patricia Kay Youngson/via Internet
The GMO truth
I was surprised to read your article about the GMO sugar beet farmer (“A day in the life of a GMO farmer,” Boulderganic magazine, March 28).
This comment really shocked me: “Since their introduction in 2008, environmental groups and food safety groups have criticized Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beets, citing unintended threats to human health and the possibility of cross-pollination with non-GMO plants. However, the USDA has determined that the weed-resistant crop is unlikely to pose these risks and officially approved it for use in 2010.”
In your articles about fracking you are totally cynical about governmental oversight of this extremely hazardous procedure; yet with regard to GMOs you seem to be giving the USDA a free hand. Surely you are aware of the charges leveled against the revolving-door bureaucrats who claim to oversee the very industries that have groomed their careers? I also was very disappointed that you did not clarify in your interview with the farmer that the Monsanto product requires much greater amounts of pesticides than normal non-GMO seeds.
Michael Korn/Arvada
Hick nearly unelectable
I’m writing as a Democratic Party activist. Elected Democrats damage the Party Brand whenever they vote against popular measures like gun control, as our two U.S. senators did recently; or when they support corporate exploitation, as Gov. Hickenlooper is doing with the toxic issue of fracking. A nugget in the recent “Public Policy Polling” poll shows that our supposedly popular governor has a 44 percent disapproval rating. With that in mind, it should be noted that a politician who has a disapproval rating of more than 50 percent is generally considered as unelectable!! Fractivists have exposed Hickenlooper as an unwavering mouthpiece for fossil fuels who is even willing to sue his own constituents in Longmont in order to support an outdated fuel source.
If you don’t believe me, then consider the fact that the U.S. receives 3,900 percent more sun than Germany, yet Germany currently produces 6,000 percent more solar power. We are faced with a political problem rather than an energy problem! Fracked natural gas is not necessary in our energy mix. To my fellow fractivists, we only have to generate six more disapproval points to put our “Hickenlooper Problem” into unelectable territory — way to go!
Cliff Smedley/Lafayette
Oil/gas industry should be accountable
A rose by any other name smells as sweet. A tax by any other name costs as much. When industry cries “gas prices will go up” in response to any and every change in state oil and gas law, remember this: There are costs to extract, and whether they are folded into the price of gas or hidden as negative externalities, they are borne by us (despite the mind-boggling profits of the industry).
We are paying these costs now, and they are very real. We pay in property values, national security, shortened life, cost of health care, quality of life, health of our children, to name just a few and we are paying a lot to keep that gas price down. Industry wants the costs to be hidden because for them, low prices mean increasing demand.
What they are fighting is accountability.
So when industry cries “gas prices will rise if you regulate us,” remember that industry would have you believe we’re talking about increasing costs, when in fact, we’re talking about shifting costs to the column in which they belong so we know what we are paying for.
Accountability. Kristen Mecca/Niwot
