Magazine
Let's Get Small

June 15, 2009

Can 'hamster power' -- distributed generation and small-scale renewable energy projects -- save the West, and the world?

Feature

Let's Get Small
Let's Get Small
Can 'hamster power' -- distributed generation and small-scale renewable energy projects -- save the West, and the world?
From Pickups to PV
From Pickups to PV
Utility brings solar power to far-flung Navajos
Growing Away from Big Coal
Growing Away from Big Coal
In Colorado and New Mexico, some rural electric cooperatives are quietly fighting to get more of their power from local and renewable sources.
Renewables: The Final Frontier
Renewables: The Final Frontier
Vaclav Smil is a historian who exemplifies Vulcan-style logic and skepticism when it comes to easy solutions to energy problems.
The Renewable Energy Landscape
The Renewable Energy Landscape
Maps, charts and text locate the nation's major renewable energy resources and some big projects on Western public land.
Thinking Past the Moment
Thinking Past the Moment
The Sierra Club's Carl Zichella discusses the balancing act involved in finding the best -- and least environmentally sensitive -- places to put big renewable energy projects

Editor's Note

Catching the sun
Catching the sun
Is it possible to help resolve a huge problem like climate change by cobbling together small, locally generated solutions?

Essays

Northward
Northward
The unexpected loveliness of the song of the varied thrush reminds the author that the birds are on the move, driven by climate change.

Book Reviews

The other Trail of Tears
The other Trail of Tears
British author Brian Schofield pulls no punches in his account of a tragic episode in American history, Selling Your Father’s Bones: America’s 140-year War Against the Nez Perce Tribe.

Writers on the Range

And you think times are tough
And you think times are tough
The articles in old American Heritage magazines remind us that life in the West used to be a whole lot harder than it is.

Dear Friends

See you in July
See you in July
High Country News skips an issue; visitors; Ray Ring wins prize; correction.

Letters

Two Weeks in the West

Modern-day La Mancha
Modern-day La Mancha
Are wind-turbine-fighting environmentalists re-enacting Don Quixote's crusade against windmills -- while ignoring the real monster of climate change?
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