The end of the oil and gas era may be in sight, but the
current energy boom in the West means that a rough and wild ride is
still ahead
Magazine
December 12, 2005
The end of the oil and gas era may be in sight, but the current energy boom in the West means that a rough and wild ride is still ahead. Also in this issue: After Michele DeHart of the Fish Passage Center in Portland, Ore., publicly supported a plan to protect salmon, angry lawmakers led by Sen. Larry Craig yanked the center’s funding.
Feature
Northeastern Utah, southern Wyoming and western Colorado
are humming with new talk of oil shale, but industry insiders say
that the technology has years to go before oil shale development is
financially and environmentally viable
As energy companies go after "unconventional" natural gas
– such as tight-sands gas and coalbed methane –the
environmental impacts are becoming increasingly apparent
Westerners are making a few small efforts to conserve
energy in the face of higher prices, but environmentalists wonder
what it will take to inspire a real change in behavior
With the demand for renewable energy growing and the costs
falling, solar and wind power have moved out of the realm of
idealism into that of the marketplace
Editor's Note
High Country News prides itself on
keeping close to the ground, but for this special issue, we look at
the energy boom in the West from a global perspective
Uncommon Westerners
Award-winning author Denise Chavez created the Border Book
Festival, and founded a Cultural Center in Mesilla, N.M., to help
heal the cultural wounds of the U.S.-Mexico border
Essays
Writer and historian Alvin Josephy is remembered as a good
friend to Indian people, especially the Nez Perce Tribe
Vine Deloria Jr., author of Custer Died for Your
Sins, is remembered as a witty, impassioned and
iconoclastic writer, historian, and teacher, who fought for Indian
peoples and their right to self-determination
Book Reviews
In his serious and poetic first book, Not Just Any Land,
John Price takes a literary journey into the heart of
America’s grasslands
Karen Brichoux’s pensive new novel, The Girl She
Left Behind, recounts the challenges faced by a young woman on her
return to a small Montana town
In Bear, Robert E. Bieder traces the
history of this fascinating animal across centuries of time and a
variety of different cultures
Earth Notes, edited by Peter
Friederici, is a tasty selection of tidbits about the
Southwest’s canyon country
Engineer and city councilman Kamyar Enshayan considers the
inevitable end of the fossil fuel joyride
Writers on the Range
Accessible trails for wheelchair users should be a part of
new wilderness legislation
Heard Around the West
The Lost People of Mountain Village; big-game
tax-deduction scam; pigs and developers; coping with the medfly;
grizzlies vs. highways in Canada
Dear Friends
Visitors; notes from readers; corrections
News
After Michele DeHart of the Fish Passage Center in
Portland, Ore., publicly supported a plan to protect salmon, angry
lawmakers led by Sen. Larry Craig yanked the center’s
funding
"Speed dating" brings Utah legislators and lobbyists
together; EPA cleaning up fewer sites; Fallon, Nev., residents
breathing dangerous tungsten and cobalt; poaching at Wyoming drill
rigs
Critics say that FEMA’s National Flood Insurance
Program is encouraging development in flood-prone areas alongside
Western rivers, such as the Rio Grande
Wyoming lawmakers are trying to pass a law to prevent
sheepherders from quitting their jobs without notice in search of
better-paying employment
The BLM wants to allow oil and gas companies to drill near
Pinedale, Wyo., in wintertime, and some conservationists think the
change may actually help declining mule deer populations
The Forest Service is considering "green" certification
for timber produced on the national forests, but environmentalists
fear it's a form of greenwashing that will wrongly legitimize
public-land logging
Letters
- The White Sands discovery only confirms what Indigenous people have said all along
- When public health becomes the public enemy
- 9 numbers that explain the BLM’s headquarters boomerang back to D.C.
- After the Palisades Tahoe name change, where is the Washoe Tribe looking next?
- In Arizona, a radical change in juvenile detention
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