Time To Be Unfaithful to Old Faithful
by George Black

Okay, here's the plan. Sell Yellowstone to ExxonMobil. Or if that's too much to stomach, maybe hand it off to one of the more enlightened energy giants -- BP, say, or Shell, although getting a foreign ownership deal through Congress might be tricky.

Think of all that geothermal energy going to waste, all of it clean, all endlessly renewable. Set up corporate headquarters at the Old Faithful Inn, lay pipes along the Firehole, drill secondary extraction points in each of the main geyser basins. Surely the surrender of a national park, even if it was our first, is a small price to pay for making a dent in our reliance on fossil fuels and the Saudi royal family.

Well, the votes are in, and apparently this modest proposal has been given the thumbs-down in our readers' poll. Yellowstone is too much to surrender. But then, what are we prepared to give up? Because the reality is that we have to accept some major trade-offs here, and quickly. The situation is too grim, too urgent, to duck them. Idealism may be what gets us up in the morning, yet these days it may not be enough to help us sleep at night.

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