I’m Leaving Las Vegas
When will the party end?
I was in Las Vegas recently for work. I flew from Newark Airport to Chicago O’Hare and then to Las Vegas. If the carbon emission calculator is correct, my trip (for me) generated 0.67 tons of CO2 emissions.
The pilot made an announcement just as we started our landing approach into Las Vegas. It was going to be a hot day and the temperature was forecast to be 106 F. Granted, it’s the summer but that sounds way too hot.
As the plane descended, the woman next to me in the window seat opened her window shade. I saw thousands of cookie-cutter homes sprawling out over a large area. They were all in the direct sunlight and I thought about how much energy they were consuming to cool their houses in this heat.
After we landed and I picked up my luggage, I took an Uber to my hotel casino. That’s when I felt the entire Las Vegas experience hit me in the face. The flashing lights, the casinos, the people walking around with drinks, and all the advertisements. Las Vegas is an adult playground that messes with your senses in order to extract your hard-earned money, and it’s quite good at it.
I have nothing against partying and having adults “get loose” from time to time, we’re human and need our rest and leisure activities, but I wonder if doing it in the middle of a desert is such a great idea in the long run.
Last year we flew into Las Vegas as a family and picked up a rental car. We drove that car to the canyons in Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. Then we ended our trip in Albuquerque. It was an epic trip that our family cherishes and talks about all the time.
One of the fondest memories I have of that trip was swimming in Lake Powell. I could feel the Colorado River current move the water as my family and I swam in its cool water. After we finished our dip we noted the water stains on the canyon walls across from us and how low the water level was.
I remember shaking my head when my inner voice spoke “The Colorado River is dying.” I didn’t want to believe it but the evidence was all around me.
It was just over two decades since I visited my beloved Southwest and I could sense something was off, something was wrong. Things were changing fast in one of the most delicate environments on the planet.
I stayed indoors the entire time I was in Las Vegas, with the exception of using an elevated pedestrian bridge connecting two casino properties together. I ate amazing food, drank delicious wine, and stayed in an air-conditioned environment for three days.
It was on the last day that I wondered what this place would become if we lost power. What would happen if all the air conditioning suddenly stopped working for the hotel and for the people who live in those thousands of cookie-cutter houses? Would there even be a Las Vegas without air conditioning?
Would Las Vegas become uninhabitable in a world of rising average ambient temperatures? How much energy will be used just to keep the party going?
I find it ironic, or fitting, that I’m back in the southwest a year after our family trip. I reflected on the awakening I had during that trip and how it became the impetus for me to start my Weathered publication. The reality was that I needed a place to vent, to scream, and to let the anger I was feeling at myself and my fellow humans out.
Above all, I needed a place to ask for forgiveness.
The words I’ve written are my apology to Mother Earth. I have been a petulant child, blind to the damage I was inflicting on her. I feel guilty that I’m part of the problem, and after a long hard look in the mirror, I started making amends and working hard to be a better human.
I soul-searched myself for a good long time before I started looking outward again. That’s when I learned that 100 companies generate over 71% of the carbon emissions. The majority of those companies are energy producers.
Our civilization is reliant on cheap energy. We need it to power our hospitals and cool our houses and casinos. We need it to fly our planes so we can travel to Las Vegas for a conference. I’m angry at the energy companies that generate the CO2 but I’m hooked on their cheap energy. We all are.
As I boarded my flight home I realized that I was adding another 0.67 tons of CO2 to an already growing problem. I realize that we can’t “wind farm” or “solar panel” our way out of this problem. The only way to cut CO2 emissions is to raise the price of “cheap energy” so much so that we don’t waste it on frivolous things, like a fake oasis in the sand.
I realized that Las Vegas is a symbol, it’s a warning to us that we haven’t been heeding. There are so many Las Vegas’s around the world, places where we’re wasting energy and tearing down our planetary life support systems at the same time.
Places where our senses are dulled, muted, or confused. Places where we walk around in a stupor, oblivious to what wanton consumption really means for our future. Places where we’re seduced with parties that will never end.
We need to stop.
We need to sober up and face the reality that’s coming for us, hard and fast. There will be hard choices to be made in the near future and we need to start by leaving all those Las Vegas’s behind and let the deserts reclaim them.
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