When do we stop assisting suicide? Potatoes and Shoshone Power--water rights matter. When the demand for racism exceeds the supply.
What are the boundaries here? What are the limits on assisted suicide?
I am, likely most of you are too, something of an agnostic on suicide, somewhere between the poles of never and no restrictions.
I vacillate back and forth and in thinking over this post prior to writing, I had to wonder if and how much my views have changed as I've gotten older.
I am a supporter of palliative care and hospice, I have no doubt there, but when it comes to suicide or assisted suicide, I feel as though these decisions aren't ours to make; I feel as though we shouldn't ask others to assist in this sort of (for lack of a better word) "trespass".
I saw the Sun article below (and I excerpted the bill it describes for convenience--linked below the article), and it was the genesis of this post because as I read it I kept asking myself the questions at the top of this post: What are the boundaries here? What are the limits on assisted suicide?
We've allowed it, are we now going to busy ourselves now whittling away more and more at the restrictions imposed? Where does that end?
I watch a fair number of dystopian movies and my mind automatically goes to things like Soylent Green or Children of Men. The government there doesn't kill people, but it actively fosters suicide and it does so without restriction.
I'm not being overly dramatic here, I realize that the bill below is gigantic leap away from things like that, but I hope what I'm getting across is my concern that we're sliding that way.
Think about this bill and put it next to the repeated calls for safe injection sites.
Do you see a common theme? Have we started a drift in the direction of saying that there is no morality, just individual choice? That we should be forced to honor and participate in someone's decision even if we find it morally repugnant?
Now put that against the freedom to decide what to do for yourself. Put that against the fact that I do not have the kind of disease that would spur someone to consider suicide as an alternative to a horrible end.
I don't have an answer to give you about it. I do know that continuing on the path we seem to be on with this bill leads me to believe that eventually there will come a point where I do have an answer.
I will eventually get to the point where I stand up and object because I'm being asked to participate too much in something I do not agree with.
Not there yet and I hope we don't move that way any more than we already have.
If you're interested in advocating on this bill, it's up for committee on the 29th. See the link below.
https://coloradosun.com/2024/01/30/colorado-aid-in-dying-law-changes/
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb24-068
We live in an arid part of the country and water's scarcity has a big impact on our policy, and likely our pocketbooks.
I wanted to do a post about water because it's been a bit and two recent things I read got my attention. I put two links below for you. The first is a Water Education Colorado article about water possibly increasing in price by 333% in the San Luis Valley. The second is a KUNC article about how a taxpayer-funded group recently bought the Shoshone Hydro Power Plant's water rights from Xcel (to then turn around and lease them back).
I wrote a pretty lengthy multipart series on the San Luis Valley and the Closed Basin Project (look back in the stacks or search my Substack page if you're interested), but one of the things that I covered in that series was the pricing of water for farmers in the San Luis Valley, and the likely hikes in those prices.
Those price hikes are now less speculative and we have a number to put behind them. Quoting the Sun article:
"A new rule approved by the area’s largest irrigation district, known as Subdistrict 1, and the Alamosa-based Rio Grande Water Conservation District, sets fees charged to pump water from a severely depleted underground aquifer at $500 an acre-foot, up from $150 an acre foot. The new program could begin as early as 2026 if the fees survive a court challenge."
At stake here is lots of money Colorado could end up paying to Texas and New Mexico over its failure (or a failure alleged by those states to be more precise--there is some controversy in what I've researched and written re the compact and how some in the Valley view it) to meet the terms of the Rio Grande Compact. Farmers in the valley are drawing down the acquifer and that lowers the river's level enough to make the downstream states agitated.
Not only does this high price hurt farmers, it could end up hurting consumers largely because of the San Luis Valley's importance as a potato growing area.
Closer to my home, apparently water cutbacks are coming to the Eastern Plains, specifically the Republican River basin. If I get some time, I will look in on that a little. In the meantime, I put an older Sun article third below if you want to read up.
Moving now across the state to close to Glenwood Springs, the KUNC article linked second below details how a group bought out Xcel's Shoshone Hydro-power plant water rights and then leased them back to Xcel.
The purpose here being to keep those rights on the Western Slope (and in the Colorado River) when Xcel closes Shoshone. This would be opposed to them going up for sale and being bought by a thirsty Front Range and sent over the mountains.
Smart thinking if you ask me. I'm glad they're doing it. The Front Range has, for too long, snapped up too much of this state's water, and I think it's time they start doing their share to deal with a lack of supply. It's just basic fairness that if there needs to be suffering that they take their share.
This article brought to mind something else that I think I'll wrap up with. Many coal-fired powerplants (and likely the mines that support them thought I'm speculating re. the mines) have water rights that will likely be going up for sale as our state mandates that they be closed.
I don't know of any advance purchases for those rights a la the Shoshone from the KUNC article. That could mean that those rights are going to end up not staying local if they go up for auction and the thirst of some Front Range community outbids the locals.
That would not be okay in my view (in keeping with what I wrote above about the Front Range). I hope someone is watching.
If I hear more about that, I'll post. If anyone reading knows of any news on this front please feel free to add to the comments.
https://www.watereducationcolorado.org/fresh-water-news/cost-to-water-crops-could-nearly-quadruple-as-san-luis-valley-fends-off-climate-change-fights-with-texas-and-new-mexico/
https://www.kunc.org/news/2024-02-09/in-100-million-colorado-river-deal-water-and-power-collide
https://coloradosun.com/2023/05/21/republican-river-basin-drying-farming/
When the demand for racism exceeds the supply, you’ll get things like this.
When one must maintain a hyper-vigilance for racism, when one must find it, when the world must fit into the paradigm of oppressor and oppressed, something will fill the void. Someone will step up and offer it.
I offer you the extended quote from the article below for consideration.
I also leave it up to you to determine whether or not you think the term is racist or xenophobic as Mr. Zialcita shows us many do.
Quick note here: the “many” restaurateurs and activists cited in his first link is actually one. Perhaps there are more, but there’s one in the NPR story he links to and he doesn’t cite more. As for the celebrity chefs, they really don’t decry it as racist. There is a glancing mention that some internet commenters said racist things when one of the chefs defended MSG.
Not okay, but you could put up pictures of fluffy little bunnies and someone on the internet would say something terrible and inappropriate (racism being the least of the bad things).
My main point here is twofold:
Putting racism in the title of a Denverite article is like catnip to the kinds of people that read that paper regularly. They want racism. They want to see it everywhere.
Whether or not this was done cynically by Denverite and/or Mr. Zialcita, it at least shows a dynamic that when you expect racism, you’ll likely be able to find it, even if you’ve really gotta dig deep. Even if you really gotta stretch.
https://denverite.com/2024/02/12/lunar-new-year-denver-restaurant-makfam-msg-ingredientracist-misconceptions/