Letter to the editor

What does Mormonism have to do with it

Greg Trainor Feb. 16, 2004 From the print edition
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  The issue of environmental consciousness cannot be framed around the issue of whether you are or are not LDS (HCN, 12/22/03: Being Green in the Land of the Saints). It’s certainly an interesting slant for the article, but whether your religion is LDS is no more an indication of your environmental slant than is race, sex or national identity.

Your map, which is attached to the article, proves my point. Can Nevada be any more conservative than Utah, and they only have 7.2 percent church members? Or Montana, with 4.5 percent? The hypothesis connecting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and anti-environmentalism doesn’t wash. Utahns are as conservative as those in Nevada and Montana.

I am in a LDS bishopric, yet am president of Friends of Westwater Canyon, a group trying to preserve Westwater from development, overuse, mining, etc. My environmental position has no connection whatsoever with my religious beliefs (only to the fact that my mother took me every week to the outside, and that was where I was happiest).

However, there are some very good "revelations," so to speak, in the article, about the Creation in LDS belief. The earth is one of God’s creations, and we are part of it.

Greg Trainor
Grand Junction, Colorado
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