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By Michael Carter, Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition Crushed desert tortoise in the Desert Tortoise Natural Area in the Mojave Desert. Photo by Kristine Berry, Environment News Service Law enforcement has been so ineffective in preventing illegal ORV use that citizens are usually left to face the problem on their own. Stopping ORVs isn’t easy, but short of an end to gasoline—which we can’t wait for—impacts will continue to worsen if there’s no intervention. In remote areas like the Mojave Desert and Colorado Plateau, where would-be activists are scattered and overwhelmed and the police are essentially powerless and blasé, all strategies for stopping ORVs involve active and sustained effort. Here are a few: ...

By Michael Carter, Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition Imagine a time when you never once worried about losing your home or your means of making a living. Imagine your community used to be prosperous and well-run, providing everything you needed. You never gave a thought to giving back to it, though you always did and everyone else did, too. It hasn’t been this way for a long time—an invasion of thieves and murderers has taken all that away—but you remember what life was like. ...

Originally posted on Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition: Susan Hyatt and Michael Carter, Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition What was my drink My delicious addiction That led to my oppression? My drug of choice I held in my hand Was a glassful of depression. —Carol Ann F., Vashon Island, Washington If you watched any commercial television in the early 1990s, you may remember the Old Milwaukee beer ad featuring pleased men relaxing with a couple sixpacks, agreeing that “It doesn’t get any better than this.” Advertising has a way of being more effective the more farfetched it becomes, by way of memorable slogans and images rather than accuracy. Anyone who has tasted Old Milwaukee can assure you it does get better than this. But any dubious, subjective claim might still sell something, so long as buyers can at least pretend to believe it. Capitalism needs to make—at the very least—a hypothetical promise of fulfillment and anything so… ...

Originally posted on Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition: While the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline and the Alberta tar sands has galvanized the environmental movement, far less attention has been paid to a related story here in the West. The state of Utah has begun making preparations for its own major tar sands and oil shale extraction projects. According to one U.S. government report, land in the region could hold up to three trillion barrels of oil — that’s more recoverable oil than has been used so far in human history. Critics say Utah is sitting on a tar sands carbon bomb. The Utah Water Quality Board has recently begun giving out permits for companies to extract from the state’s tar sands reserves. We speak to Taylor McKinnon, energy director of the Grand Canyon Trust. ...

Originally posted on Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition: For Immediate Release, January 29, 2014 Contact: Anne Mariah Tapp, Grand Canyon Trust (512) 565-9906 Uranium Mill Problems Provoke Legal Notice SALT LAKE CITY, UT— Ongoing violations of the Clean Air Act at the nation’s only operating uranium mill have prompted Grand Canyon Trust to file a 60-day notice of intent to sue Energy Fuels Resources, the owner of the White Mesa Mill, located near White Mesa and Blanding, Utah. ...

Originally posted on Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition: The Colorado River flows through the town of Rifle in Garfield County, Colorado. Photo (taken 1972) by David Hiser, courtesy of U.S. National Archives, Flickr/Creative Commons. Original article by Sandra Postel, National Geographic This week, more evidence came in that hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) poses potentially serious risks to drinking water quality and human health. ...

Originally posted on Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition: Original article by The Associated Press, Durango Herald SALT LAKE CITY – A Utah company has cleared a final hurdle to develop the first commercial oil shale mine in the nation. The Utah Division of Water Quality on Friday issued a groundwater permit to Red Leaf Resources, which plans to develop a shale mine on state land in the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah. ...

Originally posted on Deep Green Resistance Sonoran: Richard Schultz points to land-clearing work across the border from Rancho de la Osa Guest Ranch, which he co-owns. Original article by Joe Ferguson, Arizona Daily Star Sasabe residents in the Altar Valley are nervously watching as construction crews bulldoze land just across the Mexican border. ...

Originally posted on Southwest Earth First!: From the Albuquerque Journal: FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A uranium mining company seeking a mineral lease on state land in northwestern Arizona could have a hard time transporting the ore off-site because of the Navajo Nation’s objections to an industry that left a legacy of death and disease among tribal members. The section of land in Coconino County is surrounded by the Navajo Nation’s Big Boquillas Ranch. The tribe has said it will not grant Wate Mining Company LLC permission to drive commercial trucks filled with chunks of uranium ore across its land to be processed at a milling site in Blanding, Utah. ...

Originally posted on Deep Green Resistance News Service: By Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund Earlier today, the County Commission of Mora County, located in Northeastern New Mexico, became the first county in the United States to pass an ordinance banning all oil and gas extraction. Drafted with assistance from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), the Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance establishes a local Bill of Rights – including a right to clean air and water, a right to a healthy environment, and the rights of nature – while prohibiting activities which would interfere with those rights, including oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” for shale gas. ...