Three things, to be exact.*

Update, via Indigo: Please please please urge people to come to the County-wide meeting tomorrow at 5 pm at the Courthouse. While City of Boulder may be protected for another year, many people who love, work, and commune in Boulder live in Boulder County not City of Boulder. And if the City of Boulder is surrounded by fracking wells, the poison will get into the “bubble”! We’ve got to try to stop these wells from taking over the county of Boulder.

Update: some good news! Boulder (the City, not County) has passed a one year moratorium on fracking within city limits. There’s a good deal of support, additionally, for a ballot. While this will have extremely limited protective impact on our health and our childrens’ health, it’s a welcome moment of standing up to the Natural Gas industry. Reminder: as City Councilor Ken Wilson reminded us: conserve. If we’re using more than a little natural gas (hot water, heat), we’re part of the problem. ~ ed.

If gmos, fracking & coal/gas corporations [*oh! And Wal-Mart finally succeeded in gaining entree to Boulder after three decades of trying!] can defeat the citizens of Boulder, then can and will win anywhere.

This morning, at Farmers’ Market, babies played while parents laughed and dogs played off in the creek and a jazz band played and we ate our lunch and drank our coffee and shopped for local goods from farmers and students laid about the grass, getting sun. But…something is rotten in the state of Boulder: three things, to be exact, undoing the paradise that we steward.

It’s as if Darth Vader’s Evil Empire has targeted the last “Green” Rebels and infiltrated the heart of their Capitol, only instead of ewoks you’ll find entrepreneurs, old hippies (made rich off being eco-entrepreneurs), SUV-driving permaculture-studying college students, yoga teachers and climbing cycling running software developers.

Boulder, Colorado has a long, proud history of guiding its own present and shaping its own future. Of benefiting our economy through our environmentalism, and vice versa. But now, in rapid succession, well-funded shady corporate giants have successfully pushed us to:

1. allow gmos on our taxpayer-funded Open Space. {For more info}

2. allow fracking in our County, fouling our water supply and harming our health. {For more info}

3. and, now, to support a ballot undoing what we voted for only a year ago—offering up 5,000 confused signatures supporting Xcel’s underhanded ballot measure to undo last year’s ballot measure, when we heroically voted to study municipalization, making our energy utility independent, cheaper and greener. {For more info} Note: this one’s not a done deal, though it looks bad. If you signed and didn’t know what you signed, or were white-lied to about what you were signing (this has been happening), or want to take your signature off, contact New Era and ask what to do.

~

For the full story from New Era, click here. Excerpt:

Go home, Xcel. Decline to sign!

Xcel Energy is up to no good once again. They’re* attempting to place a ballot measure on the Boulder ballot that would effectively kill the city’s ability to make an informed decision about creating a greener, more affordable electric utility. This confusing and misleading ballot measure is a textbook example of how corporations attempt to influence and undermine our democracy.

They’re showing our community that they’ll stop at nothing and spend whatever it takes to protect their profits.

Tell Xcel to stop undermining our local process that voters already approved. It’s time for an energy future that’s based on innovation, not corporate control.

Petitioners will be collecting signatures throughout our community to place their initiative on the ballot—they’ll most likely be willing to say anything in order to meet their quotas and get paid.

Take the pledge: decline to sign Xcel’s misleading petition.

Let’s send a message loud and clear: Xcel, get your hands off our democracy!

…read the rest here.