Sustainability Vegas Style

I was in Las Vegas a while ago and learned a lot about sustainability and what I am willing to sacrifice in order to attain it. As most people are aware, Las Vegas sits in one of the driest deserts in the United States. The water for their fountains and lakes and cocktails does not come from the annual rainfall in the hills around the city. It comes from many places, some of it snowfall high in the Rocky Mountains to the east. The water flows down the Colorado River on its way to the ocean, but it never gets there. It is taken to provide water for the desert towns of Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.

The water Las Vegas uses is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of electricity in consumes. It is incredible the amount of lighting and air-conditioning going on in that town. Some of it comes from dams on the Colorado, some from coal-fired generation plants.

Las Vegas was packed with people from all over the world. Huge hotels with thousands of rooms were full. New hotels the size of small towns are coming on line. People love to go to Las Vegas. And, after my initial shock at the waste and unreality of the place, I loved it too! Here I am, a student of, supporter of, and praticioner of sustainability, in the most unsustainable city on earth, and I was having a good time!

After a while I was just in awe of the shear extravagance and the creativity that was everywhere.

As an environmentalist and a supporter of sustainability, I believe it should be closed. But, as a human being, I would like to go back - there is still much to see and experience. They have already opened a hotel that looks like Manhattan Island in New York, and soon they will open one that looks like Paris, France. And on and on...

So, the problem is, how can we progress toward sustainability when some of our human drives are in the opposite direction? (I am seeing my experience as representative of everyone, maybe a big leap, but it is a place to start.) We want more, bigger, faster, newer, more exciting... We are captivated by the grand experience (the Vatican, the space station, Notre Dame, and so on). How can we harness that creative energy into a new direction: consuming less, doing less, building less, thinking smaller?

I suppose I will boycott Las Vegas, but a large part of me does not want to and hopes that we can solve our environmental problems, find a source of environmentally friendly electricity, use water more thoughtfully, stop consuming land through development, and so on. In other words, find a way for Las Vegas to consume as much as it wants to with no impact on the sustainability of people, plants, and animals anywhere else in the world. I do not think this is possible. And it is just an extreme example of what goes on in every industrialized city on the earth.