Asking for responsible use of public lands not hypocritical

Re: “All your tech gear relies on fossil fuels,” July 22 commentary

Kathleen Sgamma’s op-ed piece deceives your readers by suggesting that much less land is available to fossil fuel exploitation than really is the case. She cites 109 million acres of wilderness, 84 million of National Parks, 89 million of Wildlife Refuges as if they were separate. In fact many acres of wilderness are inside Parks or Refuges so total protected acreages are less than implied. Most wildlife refuges are open to oil and gas leasing, as are most BLM and Forest Service lands. Recently our State Land Board considered drilling for state-owned minerals at Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR.

Sgamma is correct that fossil fuels are used in making modern outdoor recreation gear, but that doesn’t mean that every last acre available has to be leased. Some lands should be left alone for reasons of human health and safety, scenery or ecologically important wildlife habitat like the Arctic Refuge coastal plain — ironically just opened by the oil industry’s lackeys in Congress last year. Pauline Reetz, Denver

I would like to address Kathleen Sgamma’s contention that any effort to push back against oil and gas industry interests by those who use petroleum based products is a form of hypocrisy.

As one who has been schooled in the dismal science of economics, I would certainly acknowledge that any restriction on oil and gas production is likely to increase the price of petroleum to some degree and thus any product that utilizes it. And yes, this would mean higher costs to get to wilderness areas as well as for outdoor industry gear.

But does that mean that any effort to limit oil and gas industry production activities such as fracking on public lands is somehow inherently hypocritical? I don’t see why. Even if such advocates fail to recognize this economic trade-off or write it off to the vagaries of “corporate greed” and the like, still, where is the hypocrisy? One might even say that users of petroleum have the obligation to insist on its responsible production! David Lichtenberg, Denver

Kathleen Sgamma points out that many plastics and synthetic fabrics used in outdoor gear are made using oil, at least in part, as a starting material. She goes on to suggest that the outdoor industry is guilty of “greenwashing” and hypocrisy for opposing the overuse of oil.

A better lesson to learn would be that oil, a finite resource created over millions of years, is too valuable to just burn and convert into carbon dioxide. We should be doing everything we can to reduce the use of oil for fuel, not just because to do so is good for the environment, but also because we need (and our children and their children will need) oil for more critical uses. A revenue neutral carbon tax would be a good start in that direction. Richard Burrows, Arvada

Kathleen Sgamma is correct that fossil fuels have provided benefits to our society, including synthetic clothing and so forth. Yet she fails even to mention climate change or the outdoor recreation industry’s unique stake in it.

It’s not that these people are ignorant of the history and benefits of fossil fuels to society but realize that unabated growth without care for the environment is unsustainable.

In the “age of acceleration” since 1950, our population has gone from about 2 billion to 7.7 billion and our demand for resources has outstripped our Earth’s capacity for maintaining a healthy environment. Along with population growth fossil fuel use has soared, and humanity has clearly outpaced Earth’s capacity for maintaining a healthy environment.

We also see that there are better, more sustainable ways to produce affordable energy, manufacture consumer products (including synthetic outdoor gear), and power transportation. We see the need to sequester greenhouse gas emissions — for example, through soil regenerative practices and biochar — rather than emitting more and more.

Yes, the outdoor industry and outdoor enthusiasts consume fossil fuels like everyone else. But demanding alternatives and an end to fossil fuel dependence is not hypocrisy. It is a strategy for saving the natural world so many of us love — while saving ourselves. Paul Belanger, Geologist/paleoclimatologist, Golden