Recently, a Colorado Health Department study ranked the air quality in Aspen as worse than Fort Collins, Greeley and even areas of heavily populated Denver. It just proves what I have long believed. Aspen is a toxic waste site.

Now, before you roll your eyes in disbelief or exasperation, remember this is a town where the less fortunate can shop at the town landfill for the used merchandise that has been discarded by rich people who have merely become bored with another of their plethora of possessions.

This is a town where a cocaine dealer was considered a friend until he was indicted and the possibility that he would rat out his pals got him murdered.

Aspen represents every example of the excesses of the rich and their extravagant lifestyle. The town had to pass legislation to prevent the super rich from building monuments to themselves disguised as vacation homes that topped 50,000 square feet.

Am I saying all this out of envy and jealousy about how much these people have? Sure, there's a bit of that, but I'm angry that these vacuous, shallow people can find no better use for their time and money than buying and displaying their material goods in an ostentatious manner. I hate to see large amounts of money in the hands of people with little taste and no intelligence.

Aspen residents fly into Sardy Field in their private jets and then roll down highway 82 in their Hummers and Escalades to get to their mammoth digs so they can sit on their decks and sip their martinis while bemoaning the degradation of the environment and never recognize their lifestyle as a cause of that degradation. They rail against the extraction industries and hate miners, loggers and even ranchers, yet their McMansions sit on 5 acre ranchettes that were carved from one-time, honest to goodness, working ranches.

They tote their titanium mountain bikes on top of their steel belted SUVs. They wear diamonds and gold that have been ripped from the earth and they swathe themselves in fur while dropping their check to The Sierra Club in the downtown mailbox. These people are shameless in their wearing of animal skins. No other segment of our society is so insensitive regarding the rape of the land and the murder of animals.

I've heard that many of these homes are heated all winter even though the owners are there infrequently. And when in residence, how many cords of wood do they burn just for show and not for essential heating?

Sadly, too many people want to emulate these empty vessels. Tabloid newspapers, celebrity gossip magazines and TV shows give the have-nots a glimpse of these excesses and instead of being turned off by what they see and shunning such people, the masses want the same thing.

Originally a mining town, Aspen is now a ski mecca. Since skiing is big business in Colorado, the local news shows are always pimping for the ski areas and no one ever accuses the ski areas of being a blight on the landscape. Think about it. Hundreds of acres of forest are turned into a commercial development for a pittance in royalties. The trees are ripped out. Lift towers go up. Huge base facilities are built. Parking lots are created to accommodate the thousands of cars that drive in daily. The ski trails and back bowls encroach on animal migration routes. The water for snowmaking is sucked from nearby trout streams. All for the pleasure of the wealthy.

Look, I don't live in a yurt or have goats in the backyard and I was an avid skier when it was affordable, but I live simply. One reason is that's what I can afford but it also feels comfortably in scale with the planet. We all need to think about how much impact we have on the environment. The rich don't realize that.

One hopeful trend is that many of the hobby ranches that were so popular with celebrities who wanted to play at being westerners are coming back on the market. Seems that the celebrities found they didn't really like all that isolation and solitude especially when their cell phones wouldn't work and they couldn't keep in constant touch with their agents and other flunkies.

Fickle and trendy as they all are, perhaps they'll give us back our old mining towns as they move on to that next big thing. I wish them good luck and adios.