There is a war going on here in Durango – a war of words that seems to embody the political schism in this country that grows ever wider and more virulent over time. It is being fought weekly in the “Letters to the Editor” sections of the local papers, and it revolves around banning single-use plastic shopping bags.

 

Supporters of a bag ban point to a litany of environmental and health reasons: plastic is forever, it is toxic, it kills millions of animals, yada, yada, yada – and all true. The biggest evidence of the perils of plastic are the ever-growing continent-sized plastic gyres in the oceans. They are so large, that in some places, the ratio of plastic to plankton is 9:1. Local proponents maintain that what is bad for our oceans is bad for our land.

 

Not everyone agrees. Some view banning plastic bags as an assault on our God-given American freedom. For some, a bag-ban ordinance exposes Durango for what it is becoming: a new Boulder, the offspring of the People’s Republic, spreading Marxism and laying the groundwork for the United Nations’ takeover of the rural West.

 

Durango, however, represents the demographic shifts that have been in motion for quite some time: the latest bridgehead for the social, political and economic evolution of the American West. An evolution that isn’t any more finished today than it was in 1900.

 

When I was born in Boulder in 1959, the population of Colorado was 1.5 million, and the iconic West was still a stone’s throw out my mother’s hospital window. Since then, Boulder has become the leading edge of the future and the hub for more progressive communities spreading across the Rocky Mountain West.

 

The real source of this evolution stems not from Boulder, but from California, which has long been the cultural beacon for Colorado and other Western states. Wallace Stegner said, “I don’t think the rest of the West looks upon California as a part of the West.” What he meant was that California is not the West of today. It doesn’t look like us now; it looks like our future.

 

Since California’s gold rush in 1849, it has portended of things to come. Colorado followed suit in 1859. California shot its last Grizzly in 1924, Colorado in 1979 (for the second time). Free love, medical marijuana, emissions regulation, plastic bag bans, etc. all begin in California and move east. Like the prospectors 150 years ago, the ideas and values spawned in California pour over the Rockies, settling in safe valleys like Boulder, Aspen, Telluride and Durango – and then spill out farther still.

 

For those of us who lived in Colorado in the 1970s, the then-popular “Don’t Californicate Colorado” bumper sticker still resonates—but barely. As Colorado’s population continues to explode (up 4 million since my birth), California-style regulation becomes a necessity.

 

I have come to terms with the reality that The Homestead Act no longer represents true north on the cultural compass, and that the frontier is long gone. The empty spaces are filling up, and our resources are dwindling. To have any hope of keeping some of the American West we love, the experience of California must (as it always has done) be our guiding light.

 

My wife, who is from the Netherlands, is baffled by traditional Old West society: how it seems to legitimize cultural stagnation under the guise of personal freedom. But I understand it, for I’ve gone from cowboy to hippie to yuppie and back some – I am part of the evolution. But many still plant their identity firmly in a value system that no longer resonates with the realities of what the rural West is becoming. Those born into it hold on as tightly as a first-time bronc rider. I still do it at times, but out of habit, not conviction.

 

Californication in the 1970s meant holding back the masses. Now it means awareness, progress, iPhones and intelligent regulation from city government on up. As hard as it is to say, I embrace today’s Californication. Regulations like plastic bag bans will be part of our future – population growth and environmental limitations demand it.

 

When a bag ban likely passes in Durango, it will show once again how California’s influence, in the end, is as unstoppable as global warming.

 

– Erich Bussian
(Erich Bussian is an entrepreneur, lecturer, writer and consultant who has lived in Durango for 12 years. He has lived and worked around the world – including California.)