Minutes before 4 p.m. on a sizzling September day two years ago, right at the time when they were most needed, San Diego’s air conditioners suddenly died. Thousands of television and computer screens also flickered into darkness. Stoplights stopped working, gas stations ceased pumping, and traffic slowed to a snarl. Trains ground to a halt […]
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
A swim through housing data
Home prices climbed again this spring, even in Las Vegas, where the crash hit so hard that entire neighborhoods of brand new, foreclosed-upon houses were virtually abandoned. We’re supposed to greet the news with glee. It is, after all, an indicator of the strength of the economy. If folks can afford to pay more for […]
Posted inGoat
Going off grid is easy!
I’ve been immersed in reams of reports and data regarding the electrical grid for months (read the results!), and let me tell you this: The grid is big, it’s important, it creeps into every aspect of our modern lives, and it’s fragile. If your science fiction story is in need of a modern-Frankenstein-like human-made monster […]
Posted inGoat
Rooftop solar is killing your utility!
For over a century, monopoly electric utilities have nurtured the West. They fed the mines and the mills, and now deliver the juice to our thirsty digital devices and air conditioners. Now, it appears as if the offspring is offing its mother, as rooftop solar slowly strangles utilities. While the green media has gleefully spread […]
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Drones are not just for killing
I like drones. There, I said it, and in doing so I have made myself a pariah to many of my liberal friends. Because to them, a drone is a sinister, cowardly killing machine, buzzing around the skies of Pakistan sans pilot, just waiting to rain death from the sky. It is horrible. But then, […]
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Arizona’s impending solar war
There may be no better place on the planet to generate solar electricity than Arizona. The entire state shows up as a big red stain on those solar radiation maps, and there are plenty of places to put solar panels, from fallow alfalfa fields to parking lots and canals, where photovoltaic arrays can generate power […]
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Climate change, not terrorists, is the real threat to the power grid
Early in the morning on April 16, someone fired shots at a Pacific Gas & Electric substation near San Jose, Calif. A transformer bank was the primary victim, and it ended up losing thousands of gallons of oil. The secondary victim was the electrical grid: The power company urged residents to cut back on their […]
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The river and the drought
“We’re geniuses!” bellowed my good friend, G, as we embarked on a rafting tour of the San Juan River in southeastern Utah. The temperature was nearing 80 under a cloudless sky, only a slight breeze blew upriver and the water was unusually clear. The ranger had just told us we’d have the place pretty much […]
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Is coal making a comeback?
Last September, Citigroup quietly released a report declaring that cheap natural gas was engaged in a “symbiotic relationship” with intermittent renewable forms of energy — i.e. solar and wind — and that together the two would displace enough coal to take a big bite out of carbon emissions. Over the past month, the report has […]
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Help the economy: Start a fire.
Now that wildfire season is (already) upon us, some old-timer will surely start reminiscing about the days when “work fires” were common; when, on hot summer days, locals set forest fires in the hope that they and their buddies would get jobs on the federally-funded fire crews. A few dozen acres of brush gone up […]
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An upside to the gun-buying frenzy
The last five years have been quite nice for the firearm industry. Gun and ammunition makers had a bonanza in 2009, thanks to fears that a newly-elected President Obama would sent out jackbooted, United Nations thugs in black helicopters to steal their guns (and maybe build bike paths, too!). It didn’t happen, of course. Yet […]
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Uranium ban rethink?
When I read that mining companies are pressuring the Navajo Nation to let them mine uranium on Diné land I thought: What gall. After all, the Navajos banned uranium mining on the reservation back in 2005, and for good reason. From World War II until the mid-1980s, the federally-subsidized uranium industry pulled some 4 million […]
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Energy imbalance WTF?!
A few weeks ago, certain sectors of the environmental/renewable energy community got all fired up. We had reached a “major turning point” said one blogger. Another called the mid-February news a “milestone.” So what was all the fuss about? Did we manage to pull some charismatic megafauna away from the brink of extinction? Or perhaps […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Ski industry supports cloud seeding but downplays climate change
About a decade ago, at the dawn of what now seems like an endless drought, some Colorado ski areas made a huge fuss about sponsoring a new effort to create moisture by seeding the region’s clouds. They’d offer tens of thousands of dollars each to a contractor to shoot silver iodide into oncoming storms, generating […]
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Coal’s gasping on the Colorado Plateau
“Here in the U.S., I’m happy to say, the king is dead,” said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg this week. “Coal is a dead man walking.” While the statistics seem to back up Bloomberg’s statements — coal production is in decline, and natural gas is taking up an ever growing slice of the electricity […]
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The sad tale of Shiprock South
Residents of northwestern New Mexico may by now be numbed by the almost surreal, ongoing saga of the busted housing development in Shiprock. But to those unfamiliar with the tale, it’s downright heartbreaking. “Navajo housing project could waste millions,” reads the headline in the Farmington Daily Times, and “be forever incomplete.” The story opens: SHIPROCK […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2013: Farming on the Fringe
China v. Utah: Whose air is worse?
Quiz: Utah’s Wasatch Front or Beijing? 1. Which area had the worst air quality in its respective nation during January 2013? 2. Which place prepared for hosting the Olympic games by expanding the public transit network? 3. Which region has real-time air quality data, frequently updated on Twitter? For answers, see the bottom of this page. […]
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Where the wealth is
If you live in, say, Boulder, Napa or San Jose, and you feel like your neighbors are wealthier than you are, it’s probably not paranoia. They really do have more money than you. That’s the takeaway from the map of the week, released Feb. 11 by the U.S. Census Bureau, that shows which counties have […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
In a rural Colorado valley, old-fashioned print news lives on
On any given Tuesday, if you venture past the creaky door and the piles of paper and boxes and photos, you’ll find Dean Coombs marinating in the smell of hot lead, dust and the slow decay of old newsprint, tending an ancient printing press that emanates a rhythmic whir-swoosh. Coombs, with an unkempt gray beard, […]
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Can the West have its own Energiewende?
If perchance you are a Westerner and you find yourself rushing across the German countryside in a train one day, there are a few things that are so unlike the West that they are likely to catch your attention: *The fact that you are indeed rushing smoothly across the countryside in a train, not a […]