Are you a June Sucker?

Does the thought of fresh mountain creek water make you want to spawn in the summer? Would you like to see water as healthy as Wasatch Front mountain creek water enter and exit the jewel of our region - Utah Lake - and stay pure all the way to the Great Salt Lake? If this vision sends ripples down your scales, you just might be able to label yourself a June Sucker, or at least a citizen of June Sucker Nation.


At Bioneers today, people seemed to take to the idea of June Sucker Nation... Not surprising as it was at last years Bioneers conference when the Salmon Nation project (a major inspiration) was presented to us by Paul Hawken and Spencer Beebe.

So to any resident of the Jordan River-Utah Lake watershed reading this, we would love to hear your input. What do you think of the idea of June Sucker Nation? How can we build a coalition of Bioneers around the whole organism of our watershed, our "Basin of Relations"?

Please comment below or send us email at:
junesuckernation@gmail.com
also visit:

Permaculture Principle Highlight

Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback
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The sins of the fathers are visited on the children unto the seventh generation

For blog action day I want to encourage everyone that reads this to take some time to consider energy.
What forms does energy take? Where does it come from? How do we use it? How do we take it for granted? How can we reduce our use to what is appropriate? After we use it is it reusable or does it create pollution? How can we preserve it to be used by the 7th generation beyond our own?

The first step is to find out how you compare to the average citizen of June Sucker Nation in terms of CO2 emissions. 29 tons. Start with ZeroFootprint.net, where you can also get some feedback to act on.

To read more about my journey in this area, JUMP!

29 Tons

This news just in. Utah residents enjoy being at the top of the barrel of carbon emissions producers in the country! That puts us on a par with the 4th most polluting nation in the world, not bad when our neighbors in the Union only rank 10th out of 208 on average.

We pay the price for it too, those of us living by the Wasatch Front benefit from the life expectancy of the average chain smoker. That's a two year advance from the coffin department, plus bonus health care bills from your inhalatorily challenged lungs. Children do especially poorly with the acute particulate matter pollution we regularly experience here during inversions.

Particulate matter isn't something you can hide from. Even the best filters in the most sealed houses let slip the finest of particulate matter - which is what does your lungs the most penetrating harm.

Evading an inversion by absconding within your home is actually a good portion of what is causing the pollution (in the range of 18-37% of it)- although it doesn't have to be that way.

Electricity is 37% of our bane. Fluorescents! Wind Power! No to the 14 planned Coal Plants in our region! Energy Star! Photovoltaics!

Residential and commercial fossil fuels (natural gas) is 18%. Programmable thermostats! More insulation! Get a smaller house dammit!

Transportation! Oh our insatiable thirst for the appearance of individuality! 25%! Bike! Bipede! Telecommute! Publicly Transit!

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN during the next inversion if we bundled up, turned our thermostats all the way down, got out of our cars, turned off all of the lights, stepped into the thick air and collectively willed it to CEASE?

...Well the coal plants might still burn for other regions' lights, but hell, that's only 37% of the problem, and if you don't change your direction you'll get where you're headed.