St. Clair series on Colorado River
Jeffrey St. Clair is in the midst of writing a series of environmental, political and historical reflections from campsites along the Colorado River during a raft trip. They are published on CounterPunch.com (links cited below).
This series is essential reading for Californians interested in water politics and history because what is happening on the Colorado River now has a direct bearing on what is happening in the San Joaquin Delta. The combination of drought on the Colorado Plateau, growth of its region's cities and the diminished allotment of Colorado River water flowing into Southern California has direct impact on the extinction of the Delta Smelt and the Hun our Governor's campaign for a peripheral canal and two new dams.
St. Clair is a prolific writer on the environment, mainly in the West as far as I have read, although his Grand Theft Pentagon is well worth reading, too. His experience goes back to working with David Brower of the Sierra Club and Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire, The Monkey Wrench Gang). In articles like "The War Club Torquemadas in Birkenstocks," (www.counterpunch.org/stclair1212.html), St. Clair described in familiar detail the ethically disadvantaged policies of state and national environmental corporations (non-profit, of course) and he recently noted that war, as in Iraq, is the worst environmental catastrophe, particularly when depleted uranium is involved (http://www.counterpunch.com/stclair10252007.html). St. Clair understands the environment of the West, he understands the politics behind it and he maintains an old Western journalistic tradition by telling it as it is from a real point of view.
Bill Hatch
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October 26, 2007
The Dam That Isn't There
Going Down on the Rocks in Dinosaur
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
http://www.counterpunch.com/stclair10272007.html
(this article provides links to the previous parts of the series)
Part One: Dams, Oil and Whitewater.
Part Two: Through the Gates of Lodore.
Part Three: At Disaster Falls.
Part Four: A Half Mile of Hell.
Part Five: Greetings from Echo Park.
Part Six: The Dam That Isn't There
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book is End Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate, co-written with Alexander Cockburn. This essay will appear in Born Under a Bad Sky, to be published in December. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net.