What might California save if it met the EPA’s current air quality standards? From 2005-’07, the figure might have been $193 million — in hospital bills alone. That’s the approximate cost of about 30,000 emergency room visits and/or hospital admissions that might have been avoided if California’s skies were more breathable, according to a new […]
Totally gnarly air, dude
Posted inGoat
Who’s grabbin’ who?
A few days ago, Editor Jonathan Thompson posted “The trouble with monuments“, describing his reaction to the news that the Department of Interior has its eye on some potential new national monuments in the West. Utah politicians, unsurprisingly, have been quick to decry what they see as an unilateral “federal land grab” (despite the fact […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Three cheers
GOOD NEWS DEPARTMENT While most school districts continue to struggle (and argue) over how to cut millions of dollars out of their budgets, the residents of Grand County, Utah, were just told they could relax and take a deep breath — at least for one year. Thanks to an anonymous donor’s gift of $700,000, the […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
The smoke police
Bay Area air quality inspectors on the alert
Posted inGoat
Sick by Sippy Cup
Beware the smiling creature in your bathtub: it’s yellow, it squeaks, your kids love it, and it gets into your bloodstream—literally. The average rubber duck is covered in phthalates, industrial chemicals that make plastics more flexible. While that’s good for the rubber bounciness of bath toys, some phthalates have proven to be endocrine disruptors that […]
Posted inWotr
Republicans face an uncertain battle for governor
Republicans this year are supposed to start taking back those state capitols that have swung to Democrats and that looked possible in Colorado until early January. That’s when Republicans closed ranks behind former Congressman Scott McInnis, a one-time cop turned Denver lawyer, who was eager to don the mantle of outsider in a year when […]
Posted inGoat
This little plaza went to Market
This little “parklet” stayed at Divisadero … And this news might make some San Franciscans go “Wee wee wee,” all the way home. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom announced last week that the City by the Bay will create four new plazas and five “parklets” by summer, using contiguous parking spaces volunteered by corporations and […]
Posted inBlog
Saying “yes” to climate justice
It’s Sunday morning and I’m on my way home from the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Eugene, Ore., the annual convergence of lefty lawyers, scientists, and policy advocates on the frontlines of the fight to preserve the earth. As usual, the conference afforded a tremendous array of opportunities to learn and be inspired; every […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Shooting bullets, not blanks
UTAH The San Juan Record in Monticello, Utah, celebrated William Morley Black, a “father of thousands,” as part of its series on the “giants” of San Juan County. When Black died in 1915, he’d had six wives and 41 children, and he left 214 living grandchildren and 206 living great-grandchildren. “In the intervening 95 years, […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
The incredible journey
No longer flushing, but still flashing, a ceramic toilet fitted with a transmitter signaled its way across the Northwest last fall. Tagged to send its location to nearby cell phone towers, the discarded commode was one of 782 objects donated by 40 Seattle residents in autumn 2009 for Trash Track. This Massachusetts Institute of Technology […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
It’s the population, stupid?
On my desk sits a stack of manila folders. Each one contains an essay that argues, essentially, that all of our problems — especially the environmental ones — are caused by one thing: overpopulation. We get a lot of this sort of thing. Most of it comes from a guy named Frosty Wooldridge, who has […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Chuck Bowden’s border war
Nearly a decade on, a writer’s look at the futility of the war on drugs still matters.
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
‘Rage against the machine’
Thank you for writing about the Mountain View Neighborhood in Bernalillo County, N.M. (HCN, 2/01/10). It is rare that communities suffering from the injustice of disproportionate levels of environmental degradation are given attention in the media. I cringed to read about our deficiencies as activists and community organizers. Nevertheless, you captured the challenges that face […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
The myths of Native American identity
Everything You Know About Indians Is WrongPaul Chaat Smith193 pages,hardcover: $21.95.University of Minnesota Press, 2009. We approach the millennium as a people leading often fantastic and surreal lives. The Pequot, a tribe that’s all but extinct, run the most profitable casino in the country, and tribal members become millionaires. But guess who’s still the poorest […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Reporting facts, even when it hurts
I have read your recent feature stories on environmental justice, and as much as I want to appreciate the coverage of the stories that have built this movement and continue to push the fundamental changes necessary to clean up and restore the well-being of our planet and people, I find myself outraged at your portrayal […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Power (and financial) struggle
Despite running head-to-head with President Obama’s State of the Union speech and a talk on campus by Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko, our Jan. 27 panel discussion on energy, activism and the role of the media on the Navajo and Hopi Nations drew more than 100 Tucsonians. “Power Struggle,” co-hosted by the University of […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
The bald eagle paradox
When the recovery of one species endangers another
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Meditation in stone
Rock art is a unique cultural legacy in our region that deserves attention as we lose sites rapidly to vandalism. Unfortunately, the article “Ancient Conversations” misses this very important point (HCN, 2/01/10). It also left me with many questions about the seemingly Eurocentric interpretations of symbols. Meaningful collaboration with Native Americans is past due, and […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Letter of intent
This comment originally posted on hcn.org. Many environmentalists mischaracterize the intent of the letters that were written to the Group of 10 and other environmental groups (HCN, 2/01/10). They would say that people of color wanted to be included in the environmental movement and be part of their agenda. In fact, that was not the […]
Posted inGoat
The trouble with monuments
Last week, Western conservative congressmen found a great excuse to get all worked up, apoplectic, and downright angry in the gleeful way that Western conservatives seem to have a premium on. President Obama, they said, was ready to make a massive land grab that would turn huge swaths of Western states into federal fiefdoms, off-limits […]