Who in Utah didn’t read or hear concerning the big Recent York Times story that dropped on June 7, “Because the Great Salt Lake Dries Up, Utah Faces an Environmental ‘Nuclear Bomb’”? As a author and professor of environmental writing, I used to be intrigued by the way in which Christopher Flavelle pulled off such a feat, so along with the members of my Investigative Environmental Writing class, we discussed how Flavelle focused the eyes of the world on the catastrophic local, global, ecological, social, and economic consequences of losing the drought-stricken Great Salt Lake, and whether or not this work of journalism – nonetheless clear, objective, accurate, and well-received – may need done more to show and thereby move the conversation forward into recent, more constructive territory.
Although by some estimates the article is simply too conservative in its treatment of the problem, it teaches us concerning the Great Salt Lake’s importance and the challenges of communicating that importance to audiences that will or may not prioritize the environment. However it also raises some troubling questions on Utah’s inability or unwillingness to do the difficult work ahead. And where there are troubling questions, troubling answers aren’t far behind. How, then, does the article accomplish its objectives? How can or not it’s conservative in its treatment and still suggest why Utah is unwilling to act? The short answer is staging, a term that refers to how writers use various rhetorical strategies – omission, foregrounding, and backgrounding – to imply (slightly than to explicitly address) what we’re really up against as we try to prevent this mega disaster from worsening.
Considered one of the article’s most notable examples of staging is its use of locally sourced sources. Major contributors include state lawmakers/ranchers, scientists/professors, and a state water official. We are able to tell so much a few piece of journalism by who’s quoted in it, including its interest in fairness, truth, and reality. Notwithstanding the absence of more emphatic contributions from members of the environmental community (not to say Democrat lawmakers), Flavelle’s table is equally set. Early within the article we hear from Joel Ferry, a former Republican state lawmaker (now he’s the pinnacle of the Department of Natural Resources) who farms and ranches on the north side of the lake, “We now have this potential environmental nuclear bomb that’s going to go off if we don’t take some pretty dramatic motion.”
Perhaps probably the most striking thing about this moment within the article is just not Mr. Ferry’s nuclear bomb metaphor (though it’s memorable), but that he’s a Republican lawmaker/rancher – not a Democrat – who’s on the record for advocating for the environment vis a vis the Great Salt Lake. Mr. Ferry has sponsored several bills involving water use, amongst other things, but history – including Mr. Ferry’s own – shows that Utah Republicans aren’t normally related to environmental welfare beyond the way it affects agriculture and other traditionally Republican platforms. Another excuse the quotation stands out, and why it would surprise, mollify, or potentially mislead those that are skeptical of the Republican Party’s commitment to saving the Great Salt Lake, is that it possesses an emotional gravitas we do hardly hear from the state legislature. But because the article also suggests by noting state leaders’ reluctance to “threaten the region’s breakneck population growth and high-value agriculture,” emotions are only as worthwhile because the actions they encourage.
Readers of the NYT could possibly interpret Ferry’s comment as evidence that not all red states are divided relating to protecting the environment, but there is no such thing as a denying that Mr. Ferry’s inclusion in and contribution to the article provides some hope that Utah politicians can put aside their differences within the interest of the environmental good. Unfortunately, Christopher Flavelle doesn’t get to that within the article. For although Mr. Ferry rightly notes that “drastic changes” must be made, and we, in turn, rightly expect some explicit discussion of those changes, he gives no indication of what these changes might actually involve.
Why trouble making (or, within the case of Flavelle, including) such an evocative and promising statement in a single breath only to desert it in the subsequent? Did it not occur to Flavelle, a seasoned reporter, to ask Mr. Ferry to kindly articulate these changes? Or is it that Ferry, despite his unbridled pathos, is solely unwilling to publicize them? Regardless of the answer, we’re left to wonder what this omission – this backgrounding in the acute – suggests concerning the Utah government’s commitment to stopping what by all accounts guarantees to be probably the most catastrophic events in Utah’s modern history.
An analogous disconnect occurs a pair paragraphs later, when Timothy D. Hawkes, one other Republican lawmaker, sounds his own alarm. In keeping with Flavelle, Hawkes “wants more aggressive motion” lest the Great Salt Lake suffer “the identical fate as California’s Owens Lake, which went dry many years ago, producing the worst levels of dust pollution in the USA and helping to show the nearby community right into a veritable ghost town.”
Although Rep. Ferry and Hawkes earned “D’s” and “F’s” on the Sustainable Future section of their Progress Reports for the last three or 4 years, they each earned an “A+” for a similar section in 2022. This sudden change in status is probably going due, partially, to their recent “Yes” votes on House Bills 410 and 429, which together appropriate $45,000,000.00 to “enhance water flows, improve water quality, conserve upstream habitats, and restore wetlands and habitats, amongst other objectives” (HB 410), and to “develop the Great Salt Lake Watershed Integrated Water Assessment the present state of water resources within the Great Salt Lake Watershed and long-term trends of water supply, demands, and other aspects impacting those water resources” (HB 429).
Each bills surely have their merits, but are these bills examples of the so-called “aggressive actions” alluded to by each Rep. Ferry and Hawkes? It’s unattainable to say because neither representative refers to them as such or, indeed, to anything that may be done to truly address this crisis, an omission that’s all of the more puzzling given Rep. Hawkes assurance that his call for “aggressive actions” is “not only fear-mongering, [. . . ] It may well actually occur.” Readers might reasonably take Flavelle to task for this oversight, for not chasing the story a sentence or two further, but common sense suggests that if Hawkes had in reality identified the actions, Flavelle likely would have included them. No matter who bears the responsibility for these omissions, they forged serious doubt concerning the article’s value, that’s, beyond its appearance of getting value.
Incidentally, it’s also here that the nuclear bomb metaphor ceases to accurately describe, and will actually mislead readers about, the crisis on the Great Salt Lake. Each Rep. Ferry and Hawkes’ comments suggest that a day will come when the bomb finally detonates if we don’t do something (that’s, it’s “potential,” something that “could occur”), but in reality the bomb has already detonated and what we’re witnessing now could be the comparatively subtle, though no less devastating collapse of the Great Salt Lake ecosystem. The query is whether or not or not the lake has passed its ecological threshold, or the purpose at which the ecosystem is so degraded it could take centuries to get well. If Mr. Ferry wishes to augur the lake’s demise by comparing it to a nuclear bomb, then the bomb has been detonating in excruciatingly slow motion for many years.
Given the magnitude of the calamity facing the Great Salt Lake and people of us who live (and who hope to live!) within the Salt Lake Valley, one quickly begins to grasp why Flavelle singled out – that’s, foregrounded – overpopulation and climate change because the fundamental drivers of the lake’s demise. But by only mentioning them in passing, Flavelle again undermines the article’s value, the seriousness of the problem, and the role that Utahans can still play in averting disaster. Flavelle’s relative silence on this front is rivalled only by his sources: He a minimum of gives these issues lip-service; his sources don’t even give it that. Possibly that’s by design, and the way Flavelle still manages to say without intending to. My student, Gabe Brown, a biology major specializing in evolution, ecology, and environment, summed it up this manner, “Regardless of how factual we expect we’re being, we must acknowledge that we’re always being influenced by our own personal biases and patterns of pondering. The challenge is just not to make ourselves unbiased machines, but slightly to change into increasingly aware of how our own in addition to others’ biases are always affecting the way in which we view and interpret the world around us.”
Whatever Flavelle’s intentions, perhaps he, not wishing to risk charges of non secular bigotry, could be forgiven for failing to confront the elephant within the room by examining how the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and other faith traditions are exacerbating the results of climate change with their emphasis on having ultra-large families that require ultra-large quantities of resources to sustain. But let’s be honest: no serious discussion of this issue is feasible without it.
Overpopulation isn’t the one elephant in Flavelle’s article, nonetheless. Alexa Oldham, a second yr environmental and sustainability studies and political science student in my Investigative Environmental Writing class, said, “I find it peculiar that the article mentions that Joel Ferry – a rancher – is worried about climate change and its impacts on the Great Salt Lake, but selected to omit the incontrovertible fact that over 80 percent of Utah’s water is being allocated for agriculture.” Dash Robertson, a senior environmental and sustainability studies, agreed after which added, “Despite only making up 2.7 percent of the state’s GDP. From what I’ve read, this is basically as a consequence of the ‘use it or lose it’ system which bases farmers’ future water allotments on how much they use that yr, effectively incentivizing them to take care of their water use even in the event that they don’t need it.”
Nonetheless well-intentioned, Flavelle’s article and House Bills 410 and 429 have this in common, they kick the can down the road. House Bill 429, though it’s ostensibly designed to enhance conditions on the bottom, is one other[6] multi-million dollar boondoggle whose purpose is to “have a look at” the present status of water resources within the state, that’s, to inform us what we already know.[7] Rep. Ferry and Hawkes’ inability or unwillingness to articulate what really must be done, along with their support for bills that don’t name and address the underlying causes of Great Salt Lake’s deterioration, impedes progress on this front and at the identical time gives credence to their popularity for being “development politicians” from whom the people of Utah can expect no meaningful, long-term environmental motion. How this a part of the story escaped Flavelle and the NYT’s notice is anyone’s guess, but its omission is a loss and disservice to us all.
In fairness to Reps. Ferry and Hawkes, they will not be alone of their refusal to face the incontrovertible fact that if we don’t address climate change and overpopulation, which lie at the center of essentially all environmental ills, there shall be hell to pay. Laura Briefer, director of Salt Lake City’s public utilities department, offered three “solutions” of her own, not for saving the Great Salt Lake, but for ensuring now we have water for Utah’s unchecked population for the subsequent 20 years, at which point we could have exceeded supply. They include diverting more water from rivers and streams, recycling more wastewater, and/or drawing more groundwater from wells. Ms. Briefer is in a tricky position, to ensure, and it have to be difficult to deal with such a posh problem with so little support and with as many moving parts as this one. But because the current water crisis already shows, these will not be solutions: They’re stall tactics at worst and mitigation efforts at best that merely delay the inevitable and, with the exception perhaps of recycling wastewater, promise to speed up the issue and make the situation worse.
Christopher Flavelle’s NYT article deserves praise for spotlighting this issue, however it also appears like a missed opportunity to essentially educate readers on the depth of this crisis and what’s stopping us from resolving it. Thus, it invites us to ask what responsibility all of us have for telling stories that transcend the idiosyncrasies of the tribe, and as a substitute advocate for the unconditional and unimpeded protection of the earth. Unfortunately, relating to parsing complexity and discussing difficult truths, courage is in brief supply. The Great Salt Lake is probably the most famous lakes on the planet, but additionally it is an emblem, not only of other lakes which are on the point of collapse, but of all of the ways now we have either pushed the natural world to the brink or destroyed it outright. It deserves higher.