Still, bestselling author David Sirota's recent visit to Vegas provoked a particularly nasty response in Salon. Just looking at the tags given the story should give you the idea: Environment, Las Vegas, Opinion and Global Warming. And, of course, Sirota's interest is hardly in Las Vegas at all, only in the metaphor of Vegas. The most detailed attention he pays the city is from the airplane looking down in every sense. Among his predictable conclusions:

Whether hanging Christmas lights in Toledo, buying SUVs in Boulder, taking long showers in Atlanta, residing in sprawly suburbs near Chicago, or overspending anywhere, we are all Las Vegans now. And because we have become so environmentally and economically interconnected, what happens in our own Vegas no longer stays in our own Vegas -- it affects everyone.

Duh. Among his specific complaints about Vegas is that while many of the next-generation resorts are being built to the latest environmental standards, the lights aren't being turned off that are wasting so much power at the other resorts. Is he really suggesting Las Vegas should turn the lights off on the Strip? In short, he had no practical or original observations about Las Vegas. He just needed the metaphor. His message only required Vegas to illustrate unrestrained waste unburdened by the complexities of a real place.

Of course, Las Vegas is among the most extraordinarily wasteful places on earth, no argument there. But Sirota is not the first to notice, because Vegas is also real. There are a number of the resorts attempting innovative ways to deal with environmental issues (Sirota offers no details). The reality is that the economics of scale allow the huge resorts being built to try the latest  approaches to commercial environmental technology. In many ways Vegas is becoming a laboratory for new environmentally friendlier  approaches. The successes and failures should be studied. Those of us who live here are way past generalizing the problem. Meanwhile, it would have been nice to get some advice on how our ample sun and wind could be used better to make a more eco-friendly Sin City. Instead, this hit piece found what the author wanted to find without the burden of talking to any locals about the reality of Las Vegas and the very public worries, if insufficient action, about our environmental future.

The truth is that the environment is no more a simple issue for Las Vegas than it is for the rest of the country. Without waste, there is no Las Vegas, a city of millions, a city of affordable vacations for millions more and a Strip packed with union jobs that allow people to support and raise families. So, unsurprisingly, we reach the ending of Sirota's rant to this conclusion:

"Will we finally accept the public policy and lifestyle changes that the real world now requires? Or will 'Viva Las Vegas' always be America's motto?"

And there is the problem. Las Vegas, despite the advertising, is very much the real world. So who is the one not dealing with the "real world" here? By ignoring that, Sirota becomes his own worst critic. What are his practical, even hard, solutions to bring upon the real testing ground of Las Vegas where people's homes, jobs and lives depend on solutions? By treating Las Vegas simply as a metaphor for all he hates about American consumption, nothing valuable is offered by Sirota on that topic either.