I want to suggest a slight modification of the University of Texas’ motto, “What starts here changes the world.”

A more accurate slogan -- while not quite as pithy and probably less effective for public-relations purposes -- would be, “What starts here accelerates the destruction of the world.”

I am not suggesting that the administrators or faculty of UT, where I have been a professor for two decades, want to destroy the world. Rather, I’m arguing that like almost every other institution of higher education in the United States, UT is complicit in the ongoing destruction of the world by offering a curriculum that celebrates the existing economic/political/social systems, which undermine the life-sustaining capacity of the world.

While that claim may sound crazy, I think my reasoning is calm and careful. The destructive features of contemporary America’s systems -- an extractive economy that demands endless growth, with a mystical faith in high-energy/high-technology systems and gadgets, dependent on continued mass consumption of goods of questionable value -- are all woven into the fabric of UT’s teaching and research. Entire departments on campus are staffed with faculty who seem incapable of imagining a challenge to those features and appear dedicated to maintaining the systems. The goal of most courses is to train students to play by the existing rules, not question the systems that produce the rules.

The obvious problem: We face multiple, cascading ecological crises that should spur us to rethink our economy, politics, and society, but the existing rules rule out such thinking. If we can’t transcend these intellectual limits, it is not clear that an ongoing large-scale human presence on the earth will be possible. ...

We often talk about the rights of women, immigrants, and animals. Yet the rights of future generations are rarely mentioned, despite the fact that their very ability to exist is threatened by our actions today. Perhaps, if the needs and rights of future people were legally recognized, it might give us the impetus to stop projects that threaten the climate and the survival of future peoples.

That was the thought that led Carolyn Raffensperger, a lawyer and executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, to call for women across the country to join her at the Women’s Congress for Future Generations in Moab, Utah. Raffensberger and her co-organizers chose to invite women (although men were also invited) because, as producer Christy Williams-Dunton said, they “are the first environment for every [living] thing that comes through.” This gives women a sense of responsibility for the nurturing of life, she added. And because women’s voices have been largely left out of political discussions, our contribution might add insight lacking in current policies.

Meanwhile, event organizers chose Moab as the setting because, as the home of sacred sites endangered by both fracking and the mining of tar sands, it heightened our sense of urgency. Plus, Moab’s gorgeous red-rock desert and breathtaking formations like Delicate Arch—which a group of us hiked to under the light of the full moon—seemed an inspirational place for discussion on how to protect nature.

The plan, announced via email and the conference website, was to get together and brainstorm the things we’d need to do in order to ensure a livable future for the generations to come. Because the well-being of ecosystem and future people require some ...

As a direct action blockade of the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline continues in Texas, we look at what could be the first actual tar sands and oil shale strip mining operation in the United States. Not far from Moab, Utah, the state has already leased land to a Canadian energy development company that recently changed its name to U.S. Oil Sands. The company plans to mine nearly 6,000 acres in an area of unspoiled wilderness that is also the watershed of the Colorado River, which provides water to more than 30 million people. The mine itself would be water-intensive in what is already the second driest state in the country, and activists say chemicals used in the mine could pollute the water that is left. We’re joined by two activists working to block the project: John Weisheit, longtime Conservation Director of Living Rivers/Colorado Riverkeeper; and Ashley Anderson, founder and director of "Before It Starts," which is leading the fight to stop tar sands drilling in Utah.

Though born-again evangelicals glory in personal life-changing experiences, such openness to change withers when latter-day newcomers defy Protestant sects with truly “born-again,” collective do-overs. What’s wonderful for individual sinners pales when core Reformation advances are confronted with what the right in other arenas happily elevate to “big ideas.” 

And since the entire Mormon Trail challenges all that’s come before as betrayal of Jesus’ original message, no wonder millions of garden-variety fundamentalists dismiss LDS as a cult. How odd since Mormons “out-rightwing” many fundamentalist faithful on gender and gay rights, money and materialistic success, family and church-going, defense spending and America confirmed as God’s country. Though Mormons reject the trinity of Christ, downright unchristian to the less tolerant, they’re still more conservative and more Republican than any other faith.  What was once a passion-driven radical sect now brashly aligns itself to status quo authority and deference to the unfeeling mandates of billionaire capitalists.  

Ironies abound, hardly unusual for LDS.  Mormons embrace the King James Bible (written, after all, in God’s tongue), yet severely recast theology and practices, declaring themselves (big surprise) the purest Christians. Actually, LDS from the get-go went rogue, consecrating polygamy and paternalism, explicitly declaring the superiority of white skin, and that universal baptism anywhere for anyone was A-okay. When or where the historic Jesus, rumored with darkish skin, promoted these notions I leave to partisans to explain. 

Yet, say what you will about Mormons, you can’t call them un-American: they are the most successful (or conspicuous) ...

I think that we shall never see 
A Willard Romney wannabe: 
Would slavish dupes ape sham devices – 
A void of ideas, beset with vices?

He lies and dodges, struts and preens, 
Icy, disingenuous machine, 
Then beats upon his Baneful breast:

“The richest one must be the best; 
Award the power to him who prays 
That Mormon saints rule End of Days; 
With Armageddon looming near 
Let's unzip magic underwear. 
My needy bosom worships God 
To master how to scrape and nod: 
Campaigns are made by fools like me 
And billionaires who'll set us free. 
What! Re-elect that Muslim fraud 
That wonder boy, lionized abroad. 
No alien this bishop shall hogtie, 
Just Utah mandates from on high. 
Was there ever, or will likely be, 
A president more pious than me?” 
  
So spake the apostate Mitten, 
And suckered masses were smitten. 
For only fools held by this thrall 
Let rank pandering win it all.
Will besieged democracy
Fall to parasitic hypocrisy?

 
Do religion and politics mix, 
Besmirched with unchristian tricks? 
Even Dubya’s assault on reason 
Ne’er backed baptism out of season. 

Not only could Romney be worse, 
His chicanery tests my verse: 
We thought Dubya broke the mold 
But Romney-Ryan: Oy gevalt.  

“ALEC is where our struggles merge,” proclaimed the ALEC Welcoming Committee, a broad coalition of environmental, student, labor, women’s and radical groups organizing a week’s worth of protest against the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as it gathered for its annual summit at the Grand American Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah, last week.

More than a hundred activists welcomed ALEC for the opening of its five-day meeting with a “Parade of Empty Plates.” They surrounded the hotel, banging pots and pans, to highlight the devastating consequences ALEC’s corporatist lobbying has for the poor and middle class. The action and subsequent temporary occupation of Washington Square Park, across the street from the ALEC meetings, received good local media coverage and highlighted some Utahns’ concerns that Governor Gary Herbert is in ALEC’s pocket.

Organizer and spokesperson Raphael Cordray said that the ALEC Welcoming Committees’ goals are to continue exposing what they see as ALEC’s corporate cronyism and the arrogance of state legislators who have used it to become overly cozy with corporate interests.

“Corporations are so entrenched in government that many legislators ...

Nuclear scientists and engineers embrace nuclear power like a religion. The term “nuclear priesthood” was coined by Dr. Alvin Weinberg, long director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the laboratory’s website proudly notes this.  It’s not unusual for scientists at Oak Ridge and other U.S. national nuclear laboratories to refer to themselves as “nukies.” The Oak Ridge website describes Weinberg as a “prophet” of “nuclear energy.”

This religious, cultish element is integral to a report done for the U.S. Department of Energy in 1984 by Battelle Memorial Institute about how the location of nuclear waste sites can be communicated over the ages. An “atomic priesthood,” it recommends, could impart the locations in a “legend-and-ritual…retold year-by-year.” Titled “Communications Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia,” the taxpayer-funded report says: “Membership in this ‘priesthood’ would be self-selective over time.”  

Currently, Allison Macfarlane, nominated to be the new head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, says she is an “agnostic” on nuclear power—as if support or opposition to atomic energy falls on a religious spectrum. Meanwhile, Gregory Jaczko, the outgoing NRC chairman, with a Ph.D. in physics, was politically crucified because he repeatedly raised safety concerns, thus not revering nuclear power enough.   

Years ago, while I was working on a book about toxic chemicals, the ...

We're sick and tired of being bullied and stomped on by the Powers That Be in Washington, and by gollies, we're not going to take it anymore!

Hooray! It's about time that workers, consumers, small farmers and other "small fry" joined together in a populist rebellion to make big-shot Congress critters of both parties listen to us. But — uh-oh — wait a minute. These mad-as-hellers aren't wielding pitchforks and torches, but big bags of cash. Holy Thom Payne — they're bankers!

Very few Americans on this side of the ATM machine think that the biggest problem in Washington is that the moneychangers don't have enough clout. But, incredibly, here they come with a super PAC intended to force lawmakers to bow even deeper to their needs.

"Congress isn't afraid of bankers," declared one of the bank honchos who organized the Friends of Traditional Banking super PAC. "They don't think we'll do anything to kick them out of office," he said, but that's exactly the plan.

In a dramatic and wholly destructive escalation of Big Money's assault on America's democracy, FTB's funders are not out to support candidates, but "to defeat our enemies." A Utah banker who chairs the new super PAC explains that giving $10,000 or so to the opponent of an incumbent who sides with the people has no impact, "but if you say the bankers are going to put ... $1 million into your opponent's campaign, that starts to draw some attention." He calls this a "surgical" approach to carving out political power. Yeah — like doing surgery with a chainsaw and sledgehammer!

Thank you, Supreme Court, for making this crass money play possible with your plutocratic Citizens United decision. Now that bankers are going to intimidate officeholders with the threat to put unlimited campaign cash against them, we can expect Big Oil, Big Pharma and all ...

In the last few months, Republican presidential candidates from Mitt Romney to Rick Santorum have shown their ignorance about the value of public lands. And recently a handful of states have joined the fray, with state legislators introducing bills that demand Congress turn over millions of acres of public lands to the states or face a lawsuit. Utah has taken this idea the furthest, where two weeks ago Governor Gary Herbert (R) signed a bill into law demanding that Congress give 30 million acres of federal land located in Utah to the state by 2015 or it will sue.

But buried under the headlines is the fact these bills are being quietly drafted and promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing corporate front group that provides draft legislation to state lawmakers and is funded by some of America’s biggest corporations including Koch Industries, BP, Exxon Mobil, and