Earth, actually…

I went on a trip to Las Vegas this weekend.  Vegas is a favorite pastime for many Southern California citizens, and not being a native myself, I’ve decided to try to blend in with the locals, so to speak.  But the fact is that the careless pleasures of Sin City don’t leave a very good aftertaste on the discriminating palate of an earth scientist.

The desert jewel is not only an environmental disaster, it also appeals to the most primal urges of the human species.  Out of sheer curiosity, I investigated some of the city’s worst offenses. Here is an overview of the wonderful distractions and the unfortunate consequences:

The lowest common denominators:

The marketing geniuses in Las Vegas (and I say that without an ounce of sarcasm) have boiled down human instant gratification to three basic ingredients:

1. Sex – obviously sex sells, and in Vegas beautiful women are the lipstick on the pig, so to speak.  Beautiful women tend to get a man’s primal instincts all ruffled up, and as all women and many men will testify, once that happens, we are acting on another plane of consciousness.  Overwhelmed by a flood of erotic information, our brains fail to notice that we are in a giant toilet.
2. Drinks – In Las Vegas, there is very little fun that can be had without a base-layer of euphoria to buffer the cold-wind of guilt.  If it wasn’t for booze, Las Vegas would not exist, of this I’m sure.  So, alcohol is presented as a fundamental human right, and although the prices are brutal, all citizens are entitled the freedom of inebriation.
3. Shiny things – The third of the three ingredients that intimately bind us as a species is by far our most embarrassing.  Like a fish in a creek, we have a fatal attraction to sparkling lights and flashing colors.  We’ll favor the casino with the most beautiful entryway.  We’ll follow a neon sign to a very bad deal.  We’ll sit in front of a golden machine for hours on end, like a rat in a bad laboratory experiment, pulling a lever and waiting for a big reward of flashing lights, loud noises and shiny treats.  And most of the time we are paying big $ for it.

With all of these key distractions in place, it becomes pretty much impossible for anyone in Vegas to think about the ecological horror that is taking place 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  If only we knew…

The environmental impact:

I hate it when you go to a see movie that is perfectly entertaining and you thoroughly enjoy yourself, and then on the way out of the theater, your thoughtful date casually mentions what a horrible shame it is that 5 elephants were ruthlessly murdered during the shooting of the main action scene.  I’m never one to kill a buzz, however, I think that by now everyone in is well aware that the beauty of Las Vegas, from an environmental perspective, is entirely unsustainable.

(Source: A History of Las Vegas Water)

• Las Vegas is situated in the middle of a desert.  There is no lack of water in deserts, until you try to build a city there. Vegas is the largest per-capita consumer of water in the United States, coming in at a 343 gallons/day (compare that to 200 in Los Angeles).  The city gets 88% of its water from Lake Mead, and Lake levels have dropped 80 ft. in the past five years.  Granted, 59% of Vegas’s water use is by single and multi-family residences, but would any people be there at all if not for the Strip?  To give the city some credit, 51 million square feet of grass was replaced with Xeriscape since the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s Water Smart Landscapes rebate program began in 1999.  It’s a good thing — an average of 70% of individual residence drinkable water is used on landscaping. (Source: BBC News)
• Maybe it’s the sharks in the Aquarium at Mandalay Bay, the Lions under glass at MGM, or the Dolphin habitat at the Mirage – wherever you go in Vegas, there is some exotic creature to behold.  While the Mirage claims research and educational purposes for their porpoises (sorry), an unfortunate 14 dolphins have died in their tank since 1990.  Yet the Mirage receives continued permission from NOAA’s Marine Fisheries Service to import the dolphins from Bermuda. (source: The Las Vegas Sun)  Maybe we forget that because wild animals are not domesticated, they don’t benefit from human companionship like a dog or a cat.  They prefer their natural surroundings. And if presented the opportunity, in some cases, they attack — but who can blame them?
• This weekend in August, we were experiencing a strong cold front.  It was 98 degrees at 5pm.  The locals were loving it because it was below the August average 108, but from our comfy 75 in Irvine, it was like trekking the Sahara without a camel.  That is, of course, until you feel the air conditioning.  It’s amazing.  But what’s good for the weary gambler is bad for the world.  Energy consumption of Las Vegas : astronomical!!!  The new CityCentre housing and casino project on the strip will require 400,000 megawatts at a cost of $40,000,000 a year — producing 160,000,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum. (source: ClimateDenial.org)  That’s more than the output of Denmark (53,944,000), Sweden (50,875,000) and Norway (40,220,000) — combined. (source: Wikipedia)

Surprised?  I was.  Now that I’ve taken all of the vodka out of your sails, so to speak, I’d still like to invite you to go to Las Vegas.  Take a trip, have fun, look around, enjoy the energy.  We all need our occasional fix of sex, drinks and shiny things, I think, and with everything so conveniently located in one place, it’s hard to resist.  Just be aware of what it really costs, and who is paying.

—

###