What a huge Wyoming wind and Utah storage project tell us about the West’s energy landscape.
Jonathan Thompson
Jonathan Thompson is a contributing editor at High Country News. He is the author of Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands. Follow him @LandDesk
Posted inArticles
Is Denver the Houston of the Rockies — again?
Even greenie hotspots get their economic mojo from fossil fuels.
Posted inArticles
A cyclist’s plea to motorists
Cars are a deadly weapon and drivers need to take care.
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
Wacky Burning Man antics, a pop-up town and more
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Posted inArticles
Nevada wins the Tesla battery factory giga-race
Massive incentive package raises questions about corporate welfare.
Posted inArticles
Fracking Georgia O’Keeffe Country
Drill rigs pop up near Navajo communities, Chaco Canyon and the iconic Black Place.
Posted inArticles
Rural cops get militarized
Pentagon gives guns, armored vehicles and battlefield gear to rural Western counties.
Posted inGoat
Western state highways among the most dangerous in the nation
New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada especially hazardous for pedestrians.
Posted inGoat
Recreational deaths soar this summer
Grand Canyon and Colorado rivers have record year for deaths.
Posted inGoat
On the Wilderness Act’s 50th, a backpack into the Weminuche
Author ponders Wilderness Act on its 50th birthday.
Posted inGoat
The water-energy nexus could become a collision in a warming world
If you thought fracking was a water-guzzling and violent way to get the oil and gas flowing from shale, then you should check out oil shale* retorting. Earlier this month, details were made public regarding an oil shale project Chevron proposes for western Colorado. Of particular note was the amount of energy and water it […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
‘A pimp in the family’
Tribes get into the payday lending game.
Posted inGoat
Want a walkable community? Start with the main drag
At first glance, I suppose nothing appears to be amiss with the scene in this photograph. It’s Main Ave., the primary business and tourist district of Durango, Colorado. But it could be any number of mid-sized Western towns. The town has done an admirable job retaining its historic integrity and aesthetics of the architecture and […]
Posted inGoat
BP energy review reveals lingering addiction to fossil fuels
The 2014 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, released this month, is a rather dry document made up of spreadsheets and a few charts filled with stats on global energy production and consumption during 2013. But look behind the numbers, and what you’ll find is anything but dull: A detailed accounting of how much energy […]
Posted inGoat
EPA carbon regulations will not destroy the electrical grid
Just days after the Obama administration announced it would implement rules to cut carbon emissions from existing power plants, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Ak., bemoaned the collateral damage the so-called war on coal would have on the electrical grid. “I am greatly concerned EPA’s rules – particularly in combination with one another – will result in […]
Posted inGoat
Booms have a lasting impact on towns’ architectural fabric
On a trans-Wyoming reporting trip several years ago, I pulled off the interstate to check out the little town of Rawlins in the southern part of the state. I made my way past the industrial sprawl towards whatever kind of “downtown” I could find. When I finally arrived at the historic core, I was struck […]
Posted inGoat
The suburbs didn’t die — just short-circuited
Wasn’t it just a few months ago that we were all celebrating the death of the suburbs? Both Millennials and Boomers, and perhaps many of those in between, were headed for the walkable, vibrant urban core. We would bulldoze no more desert for McMansions; sunflowers would invade exurban golf courses; and the expressways built to […]
Posted inGoat
Latest agricultural census shows a small-farm revolution
They’re growing houses in the fields between the townsAnd the Starlight drive-in movie’s closing downThe road is gone to the way it was beforeAnd the spaces won’t be spaces anymore Thus sang John Gorka in his heartbreaking 1991 ballad, Houses in the Field, about families selling their farms to developers, who “paid better than the […]