Sometimes it seems as if the energy industry wants to turn the New World back into a resource colony for the rest of the globe. First, coal companies, seeing a reduction in demand domestically, tried to sell more coal overseas. Then, thanks to the shale gas glut, the fossil fuel industry has been trying to […]
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 inGoat
West’s building and population growth is not yet back to pre-Recession levels
When I started working for High Country News eight years ago this month, there was no shortage of issues to write about. Natural gas drilling was going nuts, nearly every sector of the economy was on fire and immigrants were streaming through the desert to live the dream. Perhaps most bewildering to me, however, were […]
Posted inGoat
As the economy recovers, many Westerners are left behind
Las Vegas is filled with symbols of how drastically the economic landscape of the West has changed over the past decade. Drive out into the city’s fringes, and you’ll see vast swaths of land for which developers — visions of master-planned tract home communities dancing in their heads — paid the Bureau of Land Management […]
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A data junkie’s look back at the West in 2013
’Tis the season of cheer and light and of gorging ourselves and then getting in life-threatening sledding accidents. And, of course, it’s also the season of looking back on the year that has been and futilely trying to learn from all the stupid mistakes we made. Yes, it’s Year-in-Review time. My colleague, Sarah Gilman, wrapped […]
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Research shows oil booms can yield long term socioeconomic decline
If an old-timer Denver wildcatter named James K. Munn has his way, there’s going to be an oil drilling boom in Escalante, Utah. Escalante’s a small town in the southern part of the state, placed right smack dab in the center of some of the most spectacular landscape in the West. Naturally, many residents, especially […]
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The Grand Canyon, temperature inversion and the worst parenting ever
I have two daughters, ages 12 and 14. They’ve lived in the Southwest for most of those years, and they’ve never seen the Grand Canyon. This, in my wife’s eyes at least, is a sin. My sin. “Why don’t you take them if it’s so important?” “Hey, you’re Mister Southwest guy. I took them to […]
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Sin City’s downtown is on the brink of reinvention
“We must discard the view that environmentalism means living around trees and that urbanites should always fight to preserve a city’s physical past. We must stop idolizing home ownership, which favors suburban tract homes over high-rise apartments, and stop romanticizing rural villages. We should eschew the simplistic view that better long-distance communication will reduce our […]
Posted inArticles
Drought, Glen Canyon Dam, climate change and God
Stopping by the dam during a days-long experimental flood, it’s clear that even this massive feat of engineering can’t fix the arid West.
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Arizona solar war hearings to start soon amid costly PR battle
What started out as a simple request to alter the way Arizona residents are compensated for power generated by rooftop solar has exploded into a full-blown, national headline-making, wacky political war complete with shady dealings and nasty ads. But it should be all over soon. Perhaps. Arizona Public Service is trying to get that state’s […]
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Americans are driving less, but Westerners still love their cars
Fellow Westerners: We are pathetic! Sure, we’ve got our redeeming qualities, I guess, but one of them is not our ability to mitigate the environmental impact of our commute. We Westerners are a tribe of steering-wheel-gripped, fossil-fuel-burning, trapped-in-a-tin-can-in-traffic creatures, guided along highways not by eyes and mind, but by the tinny, seductive voice of our […]
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California’s energy storage requirement may revolutionize the grid
The spring of 2011 was wetter than usual in the Pacific Northwest. A huge snow year was followed by rain, and during the peak runoff water was ripping through the hydroelectric turbines on Bonneville Power Administration’s dams. Spring is also the windy season, and hundreds of new turbines in the region were also pumping juice […]
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The shutdown is over but its impacts linger
The shutdown is over. Federal employees are going back to work, with back pay. Journalists and data geeks can access information on census.gov and usgs.gov. Tourists are once again able to see national parks. And the National Zoo’s Panda Cam – praise be! – has returned to the air. Maybe we can just chalk all […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
Tribal casinos don’t like competition
The Northern Edge Navajo Casino sits on an otherwise empty chunk of desert alongside northern New Mexico’s San Juan River, just inside the Navajo Nation’s borders. It’s a perfect place for a casino, right across the river from Farmington, N.M., home to hundreds of energy-field workers with cash burning holes in the pockets of their […]
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Which Western politicians are to blame for the shutdown?
Hotels, raft guiding outfits and other tourism-dependent businesses in and around Western national parks have collectively lost millions of dollars each day that the government has been in partial shutdown. According to the Arizona Republic, the biggest hotel near Grand Canyon National Park had about half the occupancy it normally does this time of year, […]
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The shutdown hits the West harder
Western states have a higher percentage of federal employees than the nation as a whole.
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Touring Hopi via a 10K running race at dawn
I run. And I weep. My tears may come from the fact that it’s 6 a.m., or perhaps from the burning in legs and lungs as I try to hold the pace of the leaders. But I’m pretty sure my sobs come from a deep joy inspired by the way the rising sun lights up […]
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Debunking the drill-your-way-to-low-gas-prices myth
Something funny happened over the last few weeks. First, the price of oil started climbing. Then, the announcement came that U.S. fields were producing more oil than they had since 1989. Wait? Isn’t that exactly the opposite of what’s supposed to happen under the energy independence myth? The myth goes something like this: The more […]
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Floods have hit more than just Colorado, but will they fix the Southwest drought?
Remember early July in the Southwest? New Mexico and Arizona were in the grip of record drought exacerbated by record high temperatures. Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly declared a state of emergency for drought on July 2. Feral horses across the Rez were dying of thirst. Crops withered. Lake Powell, which got only a meagre […]
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The next energy transportation fight: natural gas exports
Over the last few years, the fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground and their carbon and other pollutants out of the air has shifted. In addition to trying to stop the actual drilling and mining, a lot of effort, perhaps even more, has been put into stopping the stuff from being transported, be […]
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Forgiving Winslow, Arizona – not just another Marfa
Winslow, Ariz. has been described as sad, depressed, quiet, dead and creepy. Buildings once housing bustling businesses were abandoned and not even secured, left to the pigeons. A local gas station reportedly had spelled out “God Hates Winslow” on its sign. That’s probably not fair: The reservation border town of 10,000, once the economic and […]