Michael Ceballos’ grandfather dropped out of school at 13 to help support his family. He worked for the Santa Fe Railroad, first laying track, then as a foreman. When he retired, his grandchildren thought he might spend his pension and bonus on a new car. Instead, he enrolled in college. Today, his grandson, a genial […]
Bridging American Indian students’ scientific achievement gap
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Partisan missteps
Sierra Club lobbyist Debbie Sease laments the lack of Theodore Roosevelt-style conservationist Republicans in the current Congress (HCN, 5/2/11). As one cause for that deficiency, she need look no further than her own organization. Protection of the environment is historically a nonpartisan issue. All citizens want to breathe clean air and drink clean water. Unfortunately, […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Invasive ignorance
It’s so hard to get the public to take invasive plants seriously and to avoid using and spreading them (HCN, 4/18/11). I’m disappointed with the scarcity of native plants and the availability of invasives at many nurseries. It’s just like grocery stores selling seafood that’s on the Red List of Threatened Species. However, there has […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
In praise of prose
Just wanted to send a note of appreciation for Craig Childs’ article “Unstoppable River” (HCN, 4/18/11). Childs’ writing evokes the same feelings I get when reading Thoreau or Abbey, and he is a master of the “show me, don’t tell me” style. Why have I not heard of Childs until now? Must be this rock […]
Posted inGoat
Fun with (census) numbers
I was over in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley this weekend, drinking a beer and soaking up the spring sunshine, when I noticed a headline — front page, above the fold — blaring from a newspaper box on the sidewalk: HISPANIC POPULATION GROWS. Oh c’mon, I thought, is this really news? No, it isn’t. But then […]
Posted inRange
What’s in a code name?
Although we’ve seen ample news coverage of the American raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, one question persists. Did the code name “Geronimo” refer to the overall operation or just to bin Laden? Discussing the exact meaning of a military code name might seem like an arcane pursuit, but the use of “Geronimo” […]
Posted inGoat
Clean up your Act
In a High Country News story that ran last August, Pat Parenteau, a legal expert in watersheds and wetlands at the Vermont Law School said, “Sooner or later the Obama administration has got to come in and ask, ‘What the hell are we going to do with the Clean Water Act?’ Because right now, water […]
Posted inRange
Tribes need foreign policies
Nobel winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is trying to change the national debate about the deficit, the role of government and the impact of those policies on the day-to-day economy. “There are principled ways of cutting the deficit … putting Americans back to work,” the Columbia University professor recently said in a speech, as quoted in […]
Posted inRange
A future of jellyfish?
Consumers and scholars alike find themselves adrift in a sea of contested claims about the state of oceans, fisheries, and fish. It is a symptom of an era in which we are overwhelmed by the pace and scope of change. We are utterly reliant on complex systems to supply both the commodities that sustain our […]
Posted inGoat
Blocking solar power … with national monuments?
If you follow basic media coverage of debates over whether to protect various bits and chunks of public land from development, you’re probably painfully familiar with the following archetypal stances. We’ll call them Merle and Becky. Merle, a hardscrabble, hardworking local resident who may be involved in local government or small business and is eager […]
Posted inWotr
When all else fails, go to court
The national environmental movement is spinning its wheels in Congress and accomplishing very little. The big groups lobbied like crazy in 2008 and 2009 on the crucial issue of limiting the fossil fuels that cause climate change, but couldn’t get the Senate to approve even a moderate move to curb carbon emissions with a “cap-and-trade” […]
Posted inRange
Water truce in Colorado
About 80 percent of Colorado’s population lives on the east side of the Great Divide, and about 80 percent of the state’s precipitation falls on the west side. Moving the water to the people has been an expensive and contentious process for the past century or so. As the saying goes, “Whiskey is for drinkin’, […]
Posted inRange
Should oil refiners disclose more health and safety info?
By Eric De Place, Sightline.org Much to their credit, the United Steelworkers and the AFL-CIO want more sunlight on oil company practices. The unions believe that a string of accidents — including the deadly 2010 fire at Anacortes, Washington where Steelworkers are employed — is evidence that more safety information should be made public. WSJ’s MarketWatchreports: […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
“The country is gonna go to the bow-wows”
WYOMING To say that former Sen. Alan Simpson, 79, of Wyoming doesn’t mince words is putting it tepidly. On MSNBC’s Hardball TV show recently, he blasted presidential hopefuls from his own Republican Party because of their positions on social issues: “Who the hell is for abortion?” he asked. “I don’t know anybody running around with […]
Posted inGoat
Mopping up at Los Alamos
Last week, Los Alamos National Labs finally reached a settlement with community groups over their 2008 lawsuit claiming that polluted runoff from the facility violated its federal clean-water permit. But worries over toxic stormwater discharges at the lab go back decades (PDF report) and came to a head 11 years ago this month, when the […]
Posted inGoat
CAFO air pollution crackdown?
I’m traveling in New Mexico this week, learning about its dairy industry, and thinking a fair bit about how we raise animals — for milk and meat — in the United States. Many of the people I’ve met so far on this trip live very near large dairies. Some of the people I hope to […]
Posted inGoat
Wolverines in the Wallowas
After almost two decades of silence, the North American wolverine (Gulo gulo) is confirmed to be back on the prowl in the mountains of Oregon. Two of the feisty carnivores, dubbed “Iceman” and “Stormy,” were caught on remote camera feasting on hunks of bait meat in the Wallowa Mountains — the first verified wolverine sightings […]
Posted inRange
Swapping politics for science
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House It’s not often a government agency asks Congress to limit the amount of money it spends to do its job. But that’s what the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) did last month when it told Congress that it wants a cap put on how much it can […]
Posted inGoat
Fracking fluid spill raises concerns over regulation
On April 19, a mechanical problem at a Pennsylvania natural gas well caused thousands of gallons of briny water and fracking fluid of unknown composition to spew out of the well, overwhelm containment facilities and flow across a field and into a pond. The local emergency management agency told seven families to evacuate their homes. […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
The most influential conservationist you’ve never heard of
Washington, D.C. When environmentalists needed somebody to stand in front of the cameras on the U.S. Capitol lawn last summer, to connect BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Debbie Sease got the call. The veteran Sierra Club lobbyist — flanked by two […]