“I love the land, and it’s different from an environmentalist’s love. We have a deep, abiding love; they have a weekend love affair. Their love is intense and passionate, but it’s not an abiding love. That kind of love comes from making a living off the land.” When Garfield County, Utah, Commissioner Louise Liston said […]
How deep is your love?
Posted inFebruary 16, 2015: Chainsaw Diplomacy
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… on Sarah Gilman’s story, “Where can we say ‘Yes’ to oil and gas?” Wade Field Dixon: “Drill here and do it right.” Joanne Hudela: “Nowhere! It’s destroying everything! Make it illegal! Decriminalize industrial hemp and help heal this planet! Oil and gas is passe and ignorant!” Steve Barry: “I HEART DRILLING.” Susan Cromer: […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2015: Chainsaw Diplomacy
Ethics to law
In HCN’s special issue on the future, the first two essays discuss Aldo Leopold’s land ethic and William O. Douglas’ dissent in Sierra Club vs. Morton. I’d like to connect these ideas using Leopold and Christopher Stone, whose law review article Douglas cited in his dissent. In his 1949 “Land Ethic,” Leopold challenges us to expand […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2015: Chainsaw Diplomacy
Decent landowners
Michelle Nijhuis suggests that accelerating Aldo Leopold’s land ethic and “voluntary decency” can help us meet the challenges of the modern West (“Where’s Aldo?” HCN, 1/19/15). I would offer that the first step is to recognize and support implementation of this ethic where it already exists and to understand that doing the “right thing” for […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2015: Chainsaw Diplomacy
A recent history of land management in the Escalante region
A monumental tug of war.
Posted inFebruary 16, 2015: Chainsaw Diplomacy
Chainsaw diplomacy
In southern Utah’s Escalante watershed, a river restoration group tries to cut through old cultural barriers.
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After a string of accidents, refinery workers strike for safety
Federal and state investigations have found lax safety practices at oil refineries going back a decade.
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Aldo Leopold explains it all
Should nature be protected for humans or from humans?
Posted inFebruary 16, 2015: Chainsaw Diplomacy
Beautiful yet harrowing photos of urban sprawl
Review of ‘Lake Las Vegas/Black Mountain’ by Michael Light.
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An experiment in privatizing public land fails after 14 years
It is no secret that some state legislators in the West want to boot federal land management agencies from their states. They argue that agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service cost too much and are too detached from local values, and that states could make money by running our vast open […]
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California’s water future at a crossroads
A state commission begins deliberations on how to spend $2.7B for water storage.
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Fractivists target Denver to build support
A new campaign launches to stop fracking before it starts in and around Denver.
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Fewer trade secrets for Wyoming fracking fluid
A court settlement will make it harder for companies to hide chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing.
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Canada’s mining boom spills into U.S. waters
How do you protect a river that begins in another country?
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Crude tactics worked against the sage grouse
For years now, the oil and gas industry has been stirring up trouble for sage grouse. The possibility that the prairie-dwelling birds might receive Endangered Species Act protection gives oil executives high-grade anxiety. It would threaten jobs, they say. It would ruin the economy. It would reduce profits. All the noise the industry has made […]
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Feds demand payback for misused stimulus funds
Millions of dollars for carbon sequestration that apparently never happened.
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The increasingly unequal West
Rich get richer while everyone else wallows in a region once known to be economically egalitarian.
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Dry January means more drought across West
After a rainy December, many states now have lower-than-normal snowpacks.
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A wilderness bill for both sides of the aisle
U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson tries another Boulder-White Clouds bill in Idaho.
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Oil pipelines are going to keep breaking in rivers
On the second day of July in 2011, I walked down to my hay fields to see if the Yellowstone River had flooded its banks. It had — but so had crude oil leaking from Exxon’s Silvertip Pipeline, which runs underneath the river upstream from my farm south of Billings, Montana. That was the beginning […]