If it’s named for a scoundrel, change the namesake
The easy way to purify our geography
Posted inRange
Western resource extraction, now and then
For four years Boston-based photographer Eirik Johnson, a Seattle native, travelled around Washington, Oregon, and northern California taking pictures of loggers and fishermen. His photographs, collected into the series “Sawdust Mountain,” are on display at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington until this Sunday. The series depicts the visual impact of natural […]
Posted inWotr
A cheer for Interior Secretary Salazar’s new approach
As an economist, it startles me when representatives of the business community ignore basic economic relationships such as supply and demand. Yet oil and gas interests have been doing exactly that recently. It is hard to believe that there is anyone in the country who does not know that we are in a deep recession. […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Drive that Hummer
Is it a car or a statement?
Posted inGoat
Big cat boondoggle?
Alan Rabinowitz might be the last person you’d expect to denounce the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s recent decision to designate critical habitat for jaguars. Rabinowitz was instrumental in creating the world’s first jaguar preserve in Belize in the eighties. He’s the head honcho of Panthera, an organization with the “sole mission” of protecting wild […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
‘The environment … is where we live’
A New Mexico neighborhood offers a case study in the successes, and failures, of the environmental justice movement
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Poltertics, 2010
Will this fall’s election chronicle a Republican resurrection in the West?
Posted inWotr
Counties take steps to build a new energy economy
The November elections came and went without the hoopla of a year ago, but voters in western Colorado quietly approved measures that could set the stage for a clean energy revolution. Rural mountain communities in Gunnison, Eagle and Pitkin counties voted to support clean, homegrown energy and energy efficiency. These clean energy investments are a […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Ancient conversations
Interpreting the enigmatic patterns of Southwestern rock art.
Posted inRange
Sundance, Redford and Obama
The Sundance Film Festival is underway at Park City, Utah. This year the annual event is being covered by the alternative media news program Democracy Now!. Today, Democracy Now aired an interview with Sundance founder and LA native Robert Redford. Redford was asked to describe Utah where he owns land and a home. He did […]
Posted inGoat
The costs of coal
A controversial new report on the economics of Powder River Basin coal was written by a University of Wyoming economist — and paid for by the Wyoming Mining Association. As you might expect, the report provides some boosterish facts about coal:
Posted inGoat
Of routes and rotors
Before migrating to Paonia, I spent time in the backwoods of southwestern Oregon, occasionally on the porch of a cabin with a colony of bats living under its shingles. Each afternoon, the walls began to creak and moan like old floorboards. Then the bats — hundreds of furry clamshell bodies — would slip out, unfurl, […]
Posted inGoat
It may be the apocalypse. . .
2012? Whatever. Clearly the apocalypse is nigh-er than that. First, there’s the weather to consider. Wave after wave of Pacific storms have left Southern California’s beaches a creepy Mad-Maxian mess of shopping carts, plastic toys and other manmade flotsam that’s washed down from various megalopoli. It’s been the worst series of storms in five years, […]
Posted inRange
Tribal push to regulate Native ceremonies
When I first saw the headlines coming out of Arizona regarding a push to regulate tribal ceremonies, I couldn’t help but think tribal sovereignty might be in danger. But then I learned that the effort is coming from tribal leaders themselves in response to the three Sedona, AZ deaths and 19 illnesses that took place […]
Posted inWotr
When some ranchers use poison — just like the old days
“Biocides” was Rachel Carson’s term for pesticides that kill indiscriminately. They haven’t been much talked about since the banning of DDT and relatives in the 1970s – until now. As Pete Gober, who heads the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s effort to save the black-footed ferret, America’s most endangered mammal, put it recently: “The incredibly […]
Posted inGoat
Frackin’ Fears
Yet another group is demanding that the federal government regulate hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”), the process used to extract oil and natural gas, because it threatens human health. In a report released yesterday, Drilling Around the Law, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) argues that fracking could contaminate drinking water supplies “from Pennsylvania to Wyoming,” but […]
Posted inGoat
Attack of the dromedaries
It’s sunrise on the Colorado River, and a dozen sand-colored lumps stir by the banks. Bodies rise on spindly legs. Mouths open with a sound like pulling dentures. In a flash of gums, twelve sets of teeth clamp down on the nearest tamarisk plants. Chomp. Chomp. Leaves, bark and thorns disappear in a rhythm of […]
Posted inWotr
Kicking and screaming, the BLM makes a deal
It’s taken much longer than it should have, but the world’s longest outdoor art gallery will finally get some protection from the gas drilling that threatens it. What’s at stake is the rich history of eastern Utah’s Nine Mile Canyon. Its red sandstone cliffs contain prehistoric cliff dwellings and are etched with thousands of Anasazi […]