Fellow Westerners: We are pathetic! Sure, we’ve got our redeeming qualities, I guess, but one of them is not our ability to mitigate the environmental impact of our commute. We Westerners are a tribe of steering-wheel-gripped, fossil-fuel-burning, trapped-in-a-tin-can-in-traffic creatures, guided along highways not by eyes and mind, but by the tinny, seductive voice of our […]
Americans are driving less, but Westerners still love their cars
Posted inGoat
Will stricter emissions limits mean stranded assets for investors?
Forty-five of the world’s top oil and gas producers received a letter, released at the end of October, that must have come as something of a wake-up call. Seventy investors that control a total of $3 trillion of those companies’ assets sent off the missive with one question in mind: What’s going to happen to […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
O pioneer: A filmmaker explores how we find home in the West
L.A. transplant Vera Brunner-Sung’s first fictional work tackles displacement, transience and belonging in Montana.
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
KDNK Radio speaks with reporter Krista Langlois
As Colorado voters consider a new education funding mechanism with Amendment, a decade-old law in Alaska is closing rural schools. On this episode of Sounds of the High Country, KDNK Radio’s collaboration with the High Country News, KDNK’s Eric Skalac talks to Krista Langlois. Past editions of Sounds of the High Country are at KDNK.org, […]
Posted inGoat
Does reality TV change the reality of Alaska?
Four years ago, when I was 25, I went to Alaska to work as a wilderness guide. I bought my first pair of XtraTuf boots and my first set of head-to-toe rubber rain gear, and between seven-week trips in the backcountry, lived above a Laundromat that smelled perpetually of halibut. The first spring, my boyfriend […]
Posted inWotr
Boy Scout leadership needs higher standards
Do they fret too much about gays and not enough about some of their ill-trained youth leaders?
Posted inGoat
NPS Director Jon Jarvis on shutdown rage and funding needs for the service
National Parks Service Director Jon Jarvis had not come to Rubén Salazar Park in East Los Angeles on October 24 to talk about government shutdowns, Tea Partiers in Congress or the privatization of public lands. He had come instead to promote the park service’s American Latino Heritage initiative, a prototype of a new kind of […]
Posted inGoat
Why the farm bill’s crop insurance is a missed opportunity for reducing climate risk
This week, Congress is getting back to the big issues haunting the public, including the farm bill, which expired amid the government shutdown. Since the House and Senate have already passed two separate versions, select lawmakers are meeting today to try to reconcile their differences. The division between the two chambers centers on, you guessed […]
Posted inGoat
A new history of redwoods, eucalypts, citrus and palms in California: Conversation with an author
Jared Farmer, Utah native and associate professor of history at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, released his third book this week: Trees in Paradise: A California History. The book traces the history of redwoods, eucalyptus, citrus and palms in the Golden State from 1848 to today. Farmer takes a unique approach […]
Posted inJune 25, 1982: A $40 million pork barrel
Light rail commuting: Beating the rush in Denver
The Denver metro’s transportation planners are banking on light rail to fix problems of traffic congestion and air pollution as the city continues to grow. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/14.13/download-entire-issue
Posted inGoat
What’s at stake in this November’s off-year elections
Next week’s elections will come and go relatively peacefully. And for that we can be thankful. To simultaneously endure the hyperbolic screeching of political mailers and television ads, along with the federal government’s self-implosion, would have broken even the most committed of citizens. Then again, a high-stakes election season probably would’ve saved the federal government […]
Posted inGoat
Wonderful, gritty ‘Indian Relay’ documentary airs on PBS
If you have access to a TV on November 18, I recommend that you tune in for the nationwide debut of a new documentary about Indians in the West devoting themselves to a zany kind of horse racing. If you’re in Montana, catch the local debut on Montana PBS on October 31. They call their […]
Posted inWotr
Telluride voters will find sugar on the ballot
The pros and cons of banning sugary sodas in a mountain resort town of Colorado.
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
Western GOP governors buck their party on Obamacare
How three Western Republicans are defying party ideology by accepting the Medicaid expansion.
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
The long journey of the Gila trout
Destructive New Mexico fires may have a silver lining for a threatened fish.
Posted inGoat
New satellite technology to detect wildfires an acre in size
What started as a small blaze in the backcountry of central California this summer became the 250,000-acre Yosemite Rim Fire that forced thousands of nearby residents out of their homes. The tab at the end of the fire fighting efforts tallied over $100 million, and that’s not including lost revenue, damaged structures or the tens […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
Zombies invade the West!
Well, perhaps not yet, but it’s only a matter of time before the flesh-eating hordes are upon us. And who better to dodge the undead than High Country News? Not only are we well-versed in geography, as publishing industry veterans, we’re proven survivalists. So what’s our advice? This article appeared in the print edition of […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
How does the Colorado River drought stack up?
It’s one of the worst of the millennium.
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
The Latest: Montana puts new limits on renewable energy contracts
Updated 10/29/13 BackstoryIdaho is one of the few Western states that doesn’t mandate that some percentage of its electricity come from renewable sources. With little incentive to promote such projects, Idaho Power, the state’s biggest utility, lobbied regulators to effectively lock out new commercial wind farms in 2010. It lowered the maximum size for renewable […]