Western states bought some time with a historic agreement but still face a hotter, drier future.
Analysis
Posted inArticles
Much of rural America is doomed to decline
Public policy solutions need to grapple with, not ignore, this economic reality.
Posted inJuly 21, 2019: A Radical Return
Renegotiating the Columbia River Treaty, six decades later
How will bolstered support for tribal sovereignty and the environment change the U.S.-Canada agreement?
Posted inJuly 21, 2019: A Radical Return
Rural anxieties derailed Oregon’s climate plans
Arguments over state environmental policy impacts ignore broader challenges to rural communities.
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Job Corps program benefits communities, at-risk youth, disaster relief
Trump administration efforts to privatize and close centers met bipartisan pushback.
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New Godzilla movie makes a mess of environmental ethics
Once an allegory for the atomic bomb, the big lizard has come to represent climate change.
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Court throws book at BLM over fracking Chaco
The agency failed to consider water use.
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How do tribal nations’ treaties figure into climate change?
U.S. courts rarely favor environmental protections as a right — except when it comes to tribes expressing their treaty rights.
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We’re destroying the biodiversity we depend on
A new U.N. study shows that up to 1 million species risk extinction because humans use up nature much faster than it can be replenished.
Posted inMay 27, 2019: Public Pushback
Trump’s infrastructure order threatens local right to protect the environment
Washington blocked a coal terminal under the Clean Water Act. New rules could subvert that authority.
Posted inMay 27, 2019: Public Pushback
Climate cases set the stage for oil and gas leasing reform
The decisions could curb greenhouse gas emissions from public lands.
Posted inApril 29, 2019: A History of Violence
New Mexico’s ‘mini’ Green New Deal, dissected
The Energy Transition Act could be a model for ambitious policies of the future.
Posted inApril 15, 2019: Scene of the Crime
Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday finally gets the film he deserves
Jeffrey Palmer gives us a glimpse of the Indigenous literary giant in ‘Words from a Bear.’
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The science behind Colorado’s historic avalanches
Are such unprecedented slides due to climate change, abnormal weather, or both?
Posted inMarch 18, 2019: Arizona's Wild Horse Paradox
Gay rodeo and the subversion of Western clichés
A photo exhibit asks viewers to ponder whether, in reclaiming the idea of the cowboy, gay rodeos renounce violence or reinvest in it.
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Zinke leaves unfinished business at the Interior Department
The questionable legality of the Trump administration’s aggressive deregulatory and development-friendly policies could end up being its undoing.
Posted inDecember 24, 2018: Good news, bad news
What you lose when you lose local news
People are less likely to vote, and politics become more polarized.
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How best to share the disappearing Colorado River
Seven Western states must rewrite the rules of the river and cut water use — before they bleed the critical artery dry.
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When a huge utility company pledges to go carbon free
Xcel Energy says it wants to ‘step up and do more’ to reduce greenhouse gases.
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Hunting faces an ethical reckoning
Gruesome social media videos show how far modern hunting has drifted from its roots.