Under a scorching heat, a group of farmworkers harvests melons from a vast field near Huron, Calif. There is only one woman among the dozen or so workers; she leans into the task, her arms outstretched, her body itself a tool. The bandana around her face and her baggy long-sleeved T-shirt offer a thin protection […]
Female farmworkers are the most vulnerable
Posted inGoat
Lipstick on a Cheney
One needn’t go far to find mention of how the gun-slingin’, moose-eatin’ vice presidential pick of John McCain is going to snowmobile to victory this November on the backs of rural Western voters. Because she’s from the West (Alaska via Idaho), and because she’s been mayor of a small town (a suburb, actually), and because […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Leaky border
Efforts to stop the flow of pollution from Tijuana have bogged down in a mess
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
A Western primer
The Rocky Mountain Land Library asked a panel of Western writers a simple question: What books would you recommend to the next president? What does the next administration need to know about the American West? Our respondents were both generous and inspired with their suggestions. Although I’m sure they would all agree with author Rick […]
Posted inGoat
The Palin Effect
A couple of weeks ago, New Mexico traded its “toss up” status in the presidential election for “leaning Democrat.” And as of yesterday, the Rasmussen prediction market showed a 58% chance of an Obama/Biden victory in the Land of Enchantment. After many near-too-close-to-call election years, political winds seemed to be blowing moderately leftish. Tom Udall […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
The deja-vu of ‘Drill here, drill now’
Perhaps it is telling that when it comes to energy policy, President George W. Bush has inspired nostalgia for Jimmy Carter. “If we had only followed Carter’s energy plan,” people say, “we wouldn’t be in this fix now.” For Westerners, though, that’s a big mistake. Granted, there were some sensible aspects to Carter’s energy policies, […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Reclaiming the low country
Look at a map of the original “New West” — the transcontinental West of the post-Civil War period. It’s easy to fixate on what we don’t see. Big dams, open-pit mines, metropolises, freeways — none yet exist. National forests and parks and bombing ranges — not there. On closer inspection, the outdated maps show something […]
Posted inGoat
MMS does Denver
In the hours since the Interior Department released its report on sex, drugs, and multi-million-dollar corruption in the Minerals Management Service, news of the scandal has gone viral in the blogosphere, which means that every possible joke about drilling here, drilling now, the lubrication of government, and/or bureaucrats getting probed has already been made, repeatedly. […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
On the ballot: “Clean” coal and moose stew
“In 30 seconds, I can have one of those cut out of a 4Runner and get a couple hundred bucks.” —Josh Sorenson, an Ogden, Utah, junked-auto dealer, on turning over a catalytic converter (which contains palladium and platinum) in this age of sky-high metal prices and rising metal theft. From the Salt Lake Tribune. Updated […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
A river runs near it
Western water developers push for kinder, gentler ‘off-channel’ reservoirs
Posted inGoat
Mark Udall’s gonna steal your water!
Two weeks ago, in a move he very quickly came to regret, John McCain told a Colorado reporter that the Colorado River Compact, which governs the river’s allocation between the “upper basin” states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico and the “lower basin” states of Arizona, Nevada, and California, “obviously needs to be renegotiated.” […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Crying Fowl
After reading “Conservation Quandary,” your feature on owls, I flipped to the cover page to see if I was reading the April Fools’ edition (HCN, 8/18/08). When I realized this wasn’t a joke, my first reaction was anger that we are wasting tax money to save spotted owls from other owls. After re-reading the article, […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Keep ’em down on the farm
Comprehensive land-use planning such as we have in Oregon prevents the kind of problem that your recent story “Death, and taxes” addresses (HCN, 8/18/08). Agricultural and timber land is just that, and where it is located does not affect its property tax value. Having farmland adjacent to urban areas does not have to result in […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Wet dreams
In Jonathan Thompson’s recent column, he writes of grand new resorts that “depend entirely on the wealthy buying into them” (HCN, 8/18/08). Well, maybe not entirely. I was reminded of Leslie Marmon Silko’s highly praised 1991 novel Almanac of the Dead. One of the major plot lines is about an architect who feverishly envisions “Venice, […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Don’t eat the rich, tax them
Christopher Solomon’s article “An Unlikely Shangri-la” is a classic example of what HCN does that no one else seems to do: An otherwise obscure not-quite-news story that, when treated with careful and exhaustive reporting, provides insights of profound importance to the future of the West (HCN, 8/18/08). There are a number of significant inferences one […]
Posted inWotr
Mistakes on the fire line can lead to prosecution
Behind daily headlines about bigger and more costly wildland fires, the firefighting community has been sweating out the issue of criminal liability for serious mistakes made on the fire line. It’s not just a firefighter issue: The public has a stake in how well firefighters protect lives, property and forest values. Firefighters who know they […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Population conversation
Paul Larmer states that solutions to the West’s tough problems won’t be easy (HCN, 6/9/08). True, but we’d do well to focus on one problem whose solution would do so much to alleviate all the others: population growth, mentioned so often in passing, but concentrated on and acted on so rarely. We remain bemused and […]
Posted inGoat
Colorado gas commission backpedals on drilling rule
Remember the HCN story about the hullabaloo over the the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s attempt to strengthen the environmental regulations governing oil and gas development? The Glenwood Springs Post-Independent reports that the commission is dropping one of the most controversial of the proposed rule changes — the one that would have allowed the […]
Posted inGoat
Fending off the gold diggers
Today the Colorado Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on a case that could take away local government discretion on mining operations. The court must decide whether counties have the right to prohibit open-pit cyanide gold mining by adopting land-use regulations. (The Colorado Mining Association, an industry group, sued Summit County after it passed such […]
Posted inRnc 08
The delegates and the ghost of Teddy R.
My Greyhound bus recently crossed the Colorado state line, putting me squarely back in HCN’s coverage area. So perhaps it’s now time to ask: what did I learn about the West – and Western environmental politics – in my journey away from the region? The main thing I learned about Western Republicans is that they […]