The Great Salt Lake certainly seems to be at a crisis point. Going beyond lawn care, there's definitely a lot to say about the way heavy Mormon involvement in

The Great Salt Lake certainly seems to be at a crisis point. Going beyond lawn care, there's definitely a lot to say about the way heavy Mormon involvement in right-wing politics has negatively affected living conditions in Utah. This perspective was also, amusingly enough, taught to me directly as a student at BYU, so some portion of the church is very aware of it. But tbf it's not the policy-driving portion of the church, the part that believes that people should ignore woke godless environmentalist libs, and anyway God Will Sort It Out so keep drilling. It's more like the academic scapegoats who are hired, then end up teaching this evidentiary ecological stuff, then get chastised or fired, then the cycle repeats... (Far be it from me to claim that the Mormon church is the epitome of evil; rather I'm just sharing what I was taught, what I saw first hand, and what was related to me by my own friends & family.) There are also some interesting Salt Lake & Utah-related details, narratives & examples in this podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McZgkjXRlw8&t=1208s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McZgkjXRlw8&t=1208s > They want to convince fellow Mormons that the desert is already beautiful and has a divinely created ecological wisdom all its own. I'd love to be more optimistic about this process...anyway good luck with that. Green grass is very sensitive cultural iconography in this area. The entire mountain west gets high just thinking about green lawns and hearing that tik-tik-tik sprinkler sound. See also _Napoleon Dynamite_ for countless property examples which are apparently supposed to re-landscape starting any day now, but are obvs going to run into the issue of who's paying for that. Sigh.