The environmentalist style of warfare is to stall the enemy into submission. Climb up in a tree, stand in front of feller bunchers, block traffic, throw stink bombs on whaling ships, etc. It’s worked, and it hasn’t. Last January, environmentalists claimed a victory when the State Department denied construction of the Keystone XL pipeline pending […]
Blogs
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Some (diseases) like it hot
All sorts of things have been linked to climate change lately: skin cancer, shrinking leaves, extreme weather and death. This summer, scientists and reporters have been puzzling over a wave of disease outbreaks—hantavirus,valley fever and West Nile virus—and whether they, too, are linked to climate change. With some of these diseases the climatic connections are […]
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Number games
I’ve always enjoyed the security of numbers, especially the dependable type. Two: the number of feet I have to stand on. Six: the number of months I have to work at the fine establishment that is High Country News. These are figures I can count on. They help me navigate through the world with a […]
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Another win in the Wyoming Range
I’m not usually sold on catchy one-liners, but today, I have a favorite conservation slogan. Care to guess? I bet you won’t get it. Nope, it’s not “What Would Hayduke Do?” (Though I saw that one in Bluff, Utah, this weekend and had a chuckle.) And no, it’s not “Go Green: Eat People.” (Though that […]
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Fear and loathing in San Juan County
Vandalism and threats play out against wilderness proponents in Utah’s canyonlands.
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Marijuana politics
Marijuana occupies an unusual place in the legal world. Possessing any amount is illegal under federal law with a jail term of up to one year for first time offenders. But the ill and afflicted can happily use the plant to soothe their pains in 17 states, as long as a willing doctor prescribes it. […]
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Wilderness limited
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House I don’t go to the mega-Whole Foods in Boulder at lunchtime on Saturdays because it’s a madhouse, like some Lord of the Flies experiment where hordes of people jockey to secure a limited supply of resources. According to a study I read recently, when facing the prospect of crowding, I’m an “adjuster,” or […]
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Wild horses to the slaughter?
On Monday, the Bureau of Land Management began its helicopter-assisted roundup of 3,500 wild horses and burros from public lands. Horses gathered from the range are corralled temporarily around the West and then shipped to pastures in the Midwest, where they’re either adopted or spend the rest of their lives chomping on grass at the […]
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OPEC invades Hollywood!
The Heritage Foundation’s crack team of investigative journalists has done it again. After deep digging (looking at the film’s credits?) they determined that Gus Van Sant’s new film with Matt Damon, “Promised Land,” about oil and gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing, was at least partially funded by a firm based in the United Arab Emirates. […]
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New podcast: Fire & Brimstone
And HCN‘s editorial fellow Neil LaRubbio has a travelogue from his visit to the Gila Wilderness in the wake of the Whitewater-Baldy fire, the largest wildfire in New Mexico history, which burned through the Gila earlier this year. More fires have been allowed to burn in the Gila than in most of our nation’s forests, […]
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Big dreams in a little town
Last Thursday evening, three members of the HCN crew stopped off in El Rito, N.M., an hour and a half north of Santa Fe, where we were headed for a Board of Directors meeting. There, in a hamlet of about 1,000, we strolled through a century-old campus and learned about a grand vision for education. […]
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Yes Virginia, there is poop in your well
There’s an industry that’s been contaminating rural water wells for years, but it hasn’t had to endure the same public vitriol that “frackers” have. Last Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report placing probable blame on dairies in the Lower Yakima Valley for spoiling drinking wells in the area with nitrates and antibiotics. Local […]
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Rants from the Hill: Harvesting the Desert Shoe Tree
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a FREE podcast! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. On the […]
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The underwater gold rush
The right to dredge part of Idaho’s Salmon River for garnets and gold now belongs exclusively to one man. That was the decision of the Idaho Land Board last week when it granted Mike Conklin a mineral lease for a half-a-mile stretch of the river below Riggins, a small town near the western border of […]
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The sound of pollution
Artists like British “grime writer” Moose, who scrubs designs into filthy, smog-charred city surfaces (including the Broadway tunnel in San Francisco), have found novel ways to visualize air pollution for passersby. But now it’s also possible to experience air pollution with a different sense: hearing. Using mass spectrometry, which helps scientists pinpoint the exact compounds […]
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GOP risks much with its zeal to sell public estate
The Republican Party has formally embraced a policy to sell off America’s chunks of our public lands. That’s likely to prove as welcome as a hornet in a pair of swimming trunks. The GOP 2012 Party Platform espouses a purely market-driven exploitation of natural resources, as opposed to the traditional American system that embraces both […]
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You get what you pay for
At first glance, the LA Times’ most recent solar power expose looks like perfect fodder for the drumbeat argument from many GOP lawmakers to end federal subsidies for renewable energy projects. Big corporations building utility-scale solar in California, it points out, have been receiving huge direct and indirect payouts from the federal government, from loans […]
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Brigham Young the enlightened one
In 1847, a few years after the violent death, in Missouri, of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young led the Mormons on an exodus across the desert into the promised land, a place we now know as Utah. Young, as President of the Church of Latter Day Saints, then led the colonization of Utah and parts of […]
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Where’s the beef?
Ah, the future. It’s so fun to imagine. In 10 years, we could all be driving electric cars. We won’t download or search anymore; we’ll just tell our “wired” house what we want, and those things will appear on various devices, or on our doorsteps. And, if PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has his way, we […]
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CU public lands conference turns up a few nuggets
Conferences are often the worst place for journalists to find great story ideas or spontaneous comments – just imagine panelists sitting on a distant stage droning on about abstract topics and you’ll find your eyelids involuntarily drooping. But as someone with a lifelong interest in public lands, the lineup at the Center for the American […]