As California kicks its coal habit, economies across the West feel ripple effects. The Navajo Nation digs into its coal economy, geoduck fishermen in the Pacific Northwest take a new tack, and more.
Happy housewarming, Charlie Brown
A couple restores a Seattle home and honors the Austrian Jewish couple who once lived there.
Go West, clean megawatts
Nevada stakes its renewable energy future on California.
The toxic legacy of Exxon Valdez
We are just beginning to understand the true cost of one of America’s worst ecological disasters.
Navajo Nation bets on coal
A tribe digs into a dying industry.
A plague of tumbleweeds
A handy pamphlet on how to dig out from a tumbleweed takeover of sci-fi proportions.
California’s energy policies have ripple effects across the West
As the Golden State shifts from coal to clean, economies in other states feel it too.
Ordinary people
Return to OakpineRon Carlson272 pages, hardcover: $18.90.Viking Press, 2013. Welcome to Oakpine, a fictional small town on Wyoming’s eastern plains where four high school pals reunite in 1999, after 30 years spent leading very separate lives. In his latest novel, Return to Oakpine, the award-winning author Ron Carlson tells a moving but quiet tale about…
The farm bill and the precipitous decline of monarch butterflies
The fate of pollinators like monarchs is intertwined with federal policy.
The Latest: Another Hanford whistleblower fired
BackstoryThe Hanford Site, a vast nuclear complex along Washington’s Columbia River that once produced plutonium for warheads, has come under fire from dozens of whistleblowers in its 71-year history. In recent decades, scientists and other involved experts have criticized the $40 billion cleanup effort, citing mismanagement and other problems, including releases of airborne cancer-causing radionuclides and…
The Latest: Colorado first state to regulate methane emissions
BackstoryFrom diesel exhaust to leaking pipelines and other infrastructure, oil and natural gas development releases methane, a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than CO2, sulfur and nitrogen compounds and toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) like benzene. The latter two help form lung-damaging ozone. As drilling booms, Western gaspatch pollution sometimes rivals that of major…
The long arm of California energy policy
Distinctive landmarks define Four Corners country: Lone Cone, jutting into the pale blue sky beyond the bean fields; the awesome spires of Shiprock; the looming figure of Sleeping Ute Mountain; and, rising up from a mesa above the San Juan River in northwestern New Mexico, the steam-belching concrete and steel of the Four Corners Power…
A solution to our biological crisis
I was pleased to see the sobering article by Emily Guerin, “Crisis biology,” regarding the fungal diseases now wiping out the world’s amphibians and bats (HCN, 2/17/14). Here in California, we import some 2 million American bullfrogs for human consumption, sold mostly in the state’s many “Chinatown” live-animal food markets. The majority of the market…
Wild subversion
I enjoyed your coverage of wilderness therapy (“Wilderness therapy redefines itself,” HCN, 2/3/14). Krista Langlois’ sympathetic yet honest reporting presents the practice of wilderness therapy in an accurate and generous light. I do wish, however, that Langlois was more critical of our culture’s underlying assumptions – to which wilderness therapy is a necessary corrective. For…
Absurdly high rents in North Dakota, feral chihuahuas, and “meth” candy in Albuquerque.
THE HOUSING MARKETIf you’re paying $4,500 per month in apartment rent, you’d expect to have a great view, wouldn’t you? Perhaps the red towers of Golden Gate Bridge rising majestically from the fog? Or joggers in beautiful Central Park, far below your penthouse suite? These days, however, a high-priced apartment is just as likely to…
Win-win win
It’s probably proper for me to mention that I have worked for the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, and have been a Sierra Club member in the Southwest or Northwest for much of my adult life. In the context of the Feb. 17 HCN issue featuring collaborative…
Cracks in the urban-chic facade
The Residue YearsMitchell S. Jackson352 pages, hardcover: $26.Bloomsbury USA, 2013. Today, most people who think of Portland, Ore., picture charismatic bridges spanning the sparkling Willamette River, cozy coffeehouses and brewpubs on rain-slick streets, and passionate environmentalists bicycling to farmers markets. But behind the scenes, Portland in the 1990s teemed with crack dealers and users willing…
It’s spring break time again!
In mid-March, as snow melts and crocuses bloom in our hometown of Paonia, Colo., HCN staff takes one of our four annual publishing breaks. Look for the next issue, a special issue on unusual travel experiences around the West, to hit your mailbox around April 14. And in the meantime, visit hcn.org for fresh news…
Geoduck fishermen switch to urchins off Washington’s coast
China banned West Coast shellfish after finding traces of toxins.