Some people just like to get things done

Although I’ve lived in a small Western town for 30 years now, I have never known much about one of its fundamental institutions, the service club. Many small-town residents still center their lives on Lions, Elks, Rotary or similar organizations.

Not me: I’m not a joiner. Yet as our national culture moves farther away from such settings for broad discussions, I worry that I’m part of the problem.

A while ago when I was asked to speak at our local Rotary Club, I hesitated, picturing white guys networking with each other and complaining about newcomers. But I had published a book, and publishers instruct authors to market wherever you can.

Upon arrival, I cataloged the changes since my last Rotary visit decades ago: e president was a 20-something woman, we ordered o a menu, and people seemed less guarded.

Our local Rotary, I learned, was known as relatively liberal, and some of the older men seemed pretty vigorous. e faces re ected the town’s lilywhite complexion, but I noticed that the room contained Republicans and Democrats, evangelicals and atheists, entrepreneurs and socialist-leaning

Letter To The Editor

Nuclear energy advances ere are over 50 commercial nuclear reactors being built in other countries around the world right now. ey are in China, India, Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Japan, France, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Bangladesh, Iran, South Korea and Russia. But only two are being built in the United States.

In a small sample of world news from just the past few months:

South Korea and the UK signed an agreement that may lead to South Korea building new nuclear plants in the UK. India has given nancial approval for starting ten new reactors over the next three years, while they currently have eight reactors already under construction. Finland’s 1.6 gigawatt Olkiluoto 3 reactor just went online and combined with the older Olkiluoto 1 and 2 reactors this single site is now producing 30% of Finland’s electricity. Orlen Synthos Green Energy signed nancial agreements to build about 20 small modular reactors in Poland with a combined capacity of about 6% of the total current US commercial nuclear capacity.

France produces 70% of its electricity from nuclear. While swept up in antinuke fervor in 2015 they passed legislation that would reduce that to 50% by 2035. But last month reason regained

Writers On The Range

nonpro t workers, feminists and fans of traditional gender

Of course we didn’t talk about any of that. As one man said, the point of the club was to avoid ideology in order to focus on projects that help people. Perhaps that’s why they’d invited an author — to be sup-

So we talked about something close to my heart, and as it turned out, to theirs. My book, “Natural Rivals,” chronicles a 1890s collaboration between Sierra Club founder John Muir and U.S. Forest Service founder Gi ord Pinchot. e two men are often seen as enemies: Muir’s preservation philosophy dictated a hands-o policy to nature, while Pinchot advocated aggressive management of natural resources to provide for human needs.

So when Muir and Pinchot camped together in 1896, alongside Montana’s Lake McDonald in what would later become Glacier National Park, did they argue about whether to cut trees or dam valleys? No. ey set aside their a foothold, and their National Assembly voted 97 to 26 to rescind the 2015 legislation. Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for energy transition, now says she no longer wants any ceiling on the France’s nuclear fraction. e U.S. has about 90 operating commercial reactors with a capacity of about 100 gigawatts. Of these reactors, only one has started operating in this century. China has about 50 commercial nuclear reactors in operation, nearly all of then started this century. ey have started building 17 new reactors since 2020 alone, plan to build a whopping 155 more by 2035 and to increase their installed capacity by 250 gigawatts in the next 27 years!

What happened to the US energy mojo? It has been smothered by the tie-dyed anti-nuke Luddites of the 1970s and 1980s who have became the lawyers and bureaucrats litigating their way through the 21st century. It is time to support clean nuclear energy and an abundant energy future for all people. It is time to regain our optimism and embrace this fundamental ingredient for world prosperity: nuclear energy.

Tom Moriarty, Arvada

It is not the guns that are the problem, it is the criminals

As I drove by the Arvada West stu-

LINDA SHAPLEY Publisher lshapley@coloradocommunitymedia.com ideological di erences to focus on a bigger threat. e then-new idea of public lands — national parks, national forests, and other lands held collectively and managed with public involvement by our democratic government — was controversial. While disagreeing about the priorities for those lands, Muir and Pinchot were united in believing that public lands mattered. e Rotarians I met immediately connected with this message. at’s what lively small town folk do: Set aside di erences to get things done. dents who were protesting, I could not help but think that this is just a small part of what is happening. We had plenty of guns out there before the 1980s, but we didn’t have the type of violence we are seeing now. ere are many reasons we have a second amendment, which gives us our right to bear arms. ese reasons are not part of the problem. We have had a change in the mindset of our society. e days of leaving your .22 ri e in the car or truck and going shooting after school are pretty much gone except in a few remaining rural communities. Gun restriction laws will not help the current problem. However, better, and more e ective background checks might be a good place to start. e current leniency toward criminals has not helped the situation. If we do not have consequences for crime, we are promoting crime. is is a lesson that some of our large cities seem to have missed. e “Broken Windows” theory of crime prevention did work. It is not the guns that are the problem, it is the criminals. e lack of consequences is creating an entirely new group of villains. It is not just gun violence, it is violence itself that is the problem. is would be a better place for our students and our city governments to put their e orts. How are we going to show our stu-

By contrast, in metropolitan areas, I’ve found that people resist the message about collaborating on common goals, especially when I suggest it could work today. Surely the 1890s were di erent, they say. Ideologies were different, or personalities were di erent, or the stakes were not as high.

To me, the di erence is that today we cluster in like-minded neighborhoods. Our stores, restaurants and media are all ideologically segregated. We wrap our identity in ideology. And we forget how to nd common ground.

I say “we” because I do it, too. My attempted justi cation is the one I mentioned: I’m not a joiner.

But John Muir wasn’t a joiner either.

ERIN ADDENBROOKE Marketing Consultant eaddenbrooke@coloradocommunitymedia.com e individualistic mountaineer wasn’t even an o cial member of the blueribbon commission visiting Montana’s Lake McDonald. He just decided to tag along so that he could converse with — and listen to — people who disagreed with him.

In the dramatic results of those conversations, Muir’s essays and interviews of 1896 and 1897 merged his ideas with Pinchot’s to help persuade citizens of the value of public lands.

If we still think of today’s Rotarians as old-fashioned, maybe it’s because they attract members of all stripes who embrace idealistic values about helping people help themselves. I learned, for example, that they work to end the scourge of polio internationally while providing scholarships to high school kids. And they don’t have a political test for pitching in. ey just pick their causes, and then they ght for them.

John Clayton is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonpro t that promotes lively dialog about the West. He lives in Montana and is the author ofseveral books including “Natural Rivals: John Muir,” “Gi ord Pinchot” and “ e Creation of America’s Public Lands.” dents that we are serious about xing the problem?

So, what can and should be done at the student level to address the reasons for the demonstrations/protests? Our schools should be teaching about kindness toward others as a general principle and absolutely not be involved in things that are the province of parents. e use of school Resource O cers had been under scrutiny, this was a huge mistake. ese are some of the most valuable assets a school can have. One should be present at every school, full time. Educating students about government, the constitution and reasons for it is essential. Education about guns and gun safety would remove some of the mystery and mystic around guns. is is just the tip of the iceberg. e best thing we can do for our students, is for government to do its’ job. Treat law abiding citizens with respect and treat the criminals as criminals and stop putting them back out on the street prematurely. Set up the schools so that the students can be protected as some private schools have done quite well. is is a multifaceted problem and needs to be addressed as such. How will we show our students that we are taking this seriously? How will we bring back our value system?

William F Hineser, Arvada

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