"Scenic" Colorado

It is fun to watch the choice of words that editors and reporters make and how that choice is used to try to sway opinion. To read the Rocky Mountain News, you would think that the Roan Plateau was a Rocky Mountain National Park like feature:

The scenic Roan, beloved by hunters and anglers for its wilderness backcountry and diverse wildlife, is estimated to contain enough natural gas to heat 9 million homes for nine years.

It might be "beloved" by a very small number of folks, but it isn't a name that was well known to very many Colorado citizens until the the last month or so.

And of course, we can't forget the national treasure that the Vermillion basin has become since Bill Ritter's flyover.

Ritter also has asked the BLM not to lease the scenic Vermillion Basin in northwest Colorado for oil and gas drilling.

If the Rocky really believes that those are two unique and irreplacable treasures that gas drilling will destroy, it needs to make that case. If it can't make that case, then it needs to be more careful in its descriptions. Every square inch of Colorado is beautiful and beloved by someone, but that doesn't mean that we should put the whole state off limits to mining and drilling even if Mark Udall, John Salazar, and Ken Salazar think we should.