Will hard times renew historic alliances between environmentalists and labor unions?
Communities
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Houston Principles of the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “In Search of Solidarity.” Preamble On May 19, 1999, environmental and labor leaders confronted CEO Charles Hurwitz in Houston to demand that his Maxxam Corporation, which owns Kaiser Aluminum and Pacific Lumber Company, be held accountable for its impact on working people, communities and the […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Throwing out the dishwater
Once I lived in a one-room log cabin where I pumped my water from a well and heated it on a wood stove. When I was finished washing my dishes, I carried the dishpan outside and tossed the water on the nearby sagebrush. It seemed natural to me to return the water to the same […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Heard around the West
NORTH DAKOTA Give a cheer for cheeky Fargo, mocked as backward a mere decade ago in the movie Fargo, which featured locals spouting the stereotypical, “Yah, you betcha.” You can call the city “trendy” now, says the Los Angeles Times. Pricey condos have been built downtown, culture has arrived in the form of sushi bars […]
Posted inWotr
A feminist liberal looks back at age 90
What’s it like to look back at 90, over most of a century? Been there, done that, enjoyed most of it. When I was born in 1914, women could not vote. But in my lifetime, a woman named Hillary Clinton may well become president. The year I was born, we were at war. When I […]
Posted inWotr
Nature is not a club to bash people with
As a nature writer, I’m always interested when a columnist or politician claims to speak for “nature.” As a gay Portlander, I’m especially amazed to hear that “nature” has passed judgment against me. A religious activist here in Oregon keeps getting anti-gay initiatives on the ballot, but he hardly seems the paragon of nature. True, […]
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Jackson can’t agree on growth
A decade after a model planning effort, Jackson’s downtown is stagnant, while its workers are priced out
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA If Arnold Schwarzenegger has his way, gas-powered cars will be terminated in 10-15 years. The media-savvy governor recently drove a hydrogen-powered Toyota to a press conference in Davis, where he championed hydrogen as a replacement for gasoline, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Schwarzenegger, who has played an unstoppable robot from the future, predicted the […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
Green investor Hal Brill: Bringing the Money Home
PAONIA, COLORADO — In a house stuffed with green-building books, astrologic calendars and a world-spanning array of wooden drums, a basement office is one of the few signs that Hal Brill’s life has headed squarely into the world of high finance and asset management. “I’m definitely one of the more unlikely candidates to be an […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
The West’s mythmakers are now its newcomers
If you heard about the man who kicked off his campaign for governor by swinging a medieval battle sword on horseback in the middle of downtown Billings, you probably thought, “Only in Montana.” Glenn Schaffer posed at the offices of the local paper in February on a stallion named Big Dog Thunder Horse, and said […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
Look for the best — and keep it
This country has been built on the idea of running away, of escaping whatever makes us dissatisfied, uncomfortable or ill-at-ease. It’s a vision of entitlement that began with the founding of the Plymouth Colony four hundred years ago and caused us to spread ourselves resolutely across a continent. But more than a century after the […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
Heard around the West
COLORADO Under the headline “Say what?” Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reporter Michael Bender let a legislator’s faux pas wave in the breeze. State Sen. Mark Hillman got so fired up during a debate about a renewable energy bill that would almost certainly put windmills on his turf — the state’s eastern plains — that he […]
Posted inWotr
Maybe a good work ethic requires real jobs
A specter is haunting the mountain resorts of the West, not the specter of a working-class revolt against the owning class, but the specter of no working class at all. In western Colorado in recent years, some restaurants and shops have had to cut business hours due to a lack of workers to fill their […]
Posted inWotr
My 40 acres of Eden and the planner’s dilemma
In the 1980s, when I was a college teacher in Prescott, Ariz., I often took my history students down to Cordes Junction to visit Arcosanti, the architect Paolo Soleri’s urban experiment in the high desert. In class, we were studying the rise of the city and reading Kevin Reilly’s The West and the World, so […]
Posted inApril 12, 2004: The One-Party West
A city we can live with
If you’re reading this in a café within walking distance of work and home, and there’s a park or greenbelt area nearby, you can count yourself lucky: You live in a well-designed city. In Toward the Livable City, Emilie Buchwald gathers together 16 contributors, whose essays and art entice us toward the antidote to suburban […]
Posted inApril 12, 2004: The One-Party West
Hands-on science education takes a hit
The Bush administration, accused of manipulating science, also has a hand in what’s being taught in school
Posted inApril 12, 2004: The One-Party West
Wrecking homes for open space: Philanthropist Jennifer Speers
MOAB, UTAH — Call her a home-wrecker, and Jennifer Speers just laughs. But the title fits. In February 2003, Speers purchased the “Rio Colorado at Dewey,” a 115-acre commercial development near Moab, that included a new adobe home with spectacular views of the Colorado River. Just a few months later, she leveled the $600,000 house. […]
Posted inApril 12, 2004: The One-Party West
Heard around the West
IDAHO Are cows getting smarter? Every year, several cows make a break for freedom from barns in Bonneville County to go a-wandering. Resistance is futile. What was different this spring was the feistiness of a 1,000-pound black Angus. “We’ve been raising cows for 20 years,” said the owner, “and never had anything like this happen […]
Posted inWotr
Thank you, Sierra Club
The last time the Sierra Club was shaken into life, it was at the vigorous hands of the late David Brower. He took an insular, elite conservation group and made it grassroots, activist and environmentalist. The Sierra Club was transformed because Brower led it to act. The club first saved Dinosaur National Monument in Utah […]
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
Who will take over the ranch?
As a real estate frenzy grips the West, conservationists scramble to save a disappearing landscape