Reagan Curtis

I’ve made friends from nearly every continent on local ski lifts. Utah’s license plates claiming the “Best Snow on Earth” are validated by the millions of skiers that flood the canyons each year to “catch the powder days” at Snowbird and Alta; “rip some groomers” at Deer Valley; or “hit the parks” at Brighton and Park City. Add to the ski tourists the hordes of locals who will drop anything at a moment’s notice for a good storm, and you’ve got an entire population of people chasing powder here in Utah. However cherished the sport may be, not every skier understands the politics behind protecting our slopes, nor the impact our ski resorts have on the environment.

Utah--with all kinds of natural beauty to celebrate--needs to step it up on their plastic waste policies. Park City and Moab have already taken the lead, so why haven’t Provo, Salt Lake, and other more metropolitan areas taken any sort of responsibility?

My dad bemoans the fact that millennials are overrunning his office with their “bring your dogs to work day,” in-office yoga sessions, fascination with music festivals, and determination to save the world--one reusable bag at a time. It’s not that my dad is opposed to saving the world; he is, in fact, a brilliant, good man. But our generation has been socialized to have an entirely different type of awareness. We pride ourselves on being “woke,” giving voice to the voiceless, and doing something that matters. We sign up to teach English an ocean away, we routinely check the Wall Street Journal notifications on our phones, and we repost mental health discussions for ourselves and for the people we love. I’m sure that I could find empirical evidence in one form or another to support this next statement, but with or without the numbers I’m convinced: our generation cares about a lot of things that are bigger than us. No one can reasonably argue that all of our motivations to do good are entirely altruistic, but surely we deserve some credit for our attempts. That being said, while we pay a lot of attention to the grand, overarching injustices in our world, we often fail to take advantage of more proximate opportunities. As proximate, in fact, as your very own skin.

As various governments grapple with assuming responsibility for the devastation in the Amazon, Americans are also forced to address our own “tragedy of the commons”. Do public lands exist to serve the government and society, or does the government exist to protect such lands?