Letter to the editor

Thank you for the recent story and comments on grazing buyouts. We were especially taken by Executive Director Paul Larmer’s evocative description of the seasonality of grazing in the Paonia area, with its blend of low-elevation private lands, where cows have their calves, and its high-elevation public lands, where cows summer. Paul’s delightful soliloquy of […]

The wind farm issue is far less simplistic than Joshua Zaffos would have us believe (HCN, 3/7/05: Easterners tilt at windmills while Westerners joust with a real foe). Yes, there are wealthy people on Nantucket just as there are wealthy people in the West, but they are not the majority. The greater number of people […]

The essay on the Eastern wind farm clearly belongs to the Real Westerners vs. Effete Easterners genre (HCN, 3/7/05: Easterners tilt at windmills while Westerners joust with a real foe). The fact that wind power has many positive features does not mean that wind turbines should be sited wherever winds are particularly favorable. Easterners like […]

Jim Stiles’ stereotyping is nothing less than ignorance in its purest form (HCN, 3/21/05: A look at the West, in the funhouse mirror). Mr. Stiles, as a journalist, you should know better. It takes but one person to make a change in the world. One woman chose to ride at the front of the bus, […]

I smiled at Jim Stiles’ essay (HCN, 3/21/05: A look at the West, in the funhouse mirror). In the late 1950s, my mother ripped my sister and me out of New York City and moved us to Wyoming. My mother was tenacious and proud of her “Western” life, but despite over 30 years of living […]

Perhaps most HCN staff and readers will recognize themselves in Stiles’ essay (HCN, 3/21/05: A look at the West, in the funhouse mirror). I did not recognize myself or my neighbors. We are the Old Urban West. I am a fourth-generation Northwesterner living in the urban neighborhood where I was born, a neighborhood as strained […]

Kudos to Jim Stiles for his essay on Old and New Westerners (HCN, 3/21/05: A look at the West, in the funhouse mirror). Right on target. For 12 years, I have been fortunate to be a member of a group of Old and New Westerners that has, not easily, gotten mostly beyond the typical attitudes […]

Regarding the letter “HCN has it wrong on Bush:” I retired from the Bureau of Land Management after 31 years in resource management (HCN, 2/21/05: HCN has it wrong on Bush). The Bush administration’s policies toward the environment and resource management agencies are best described by an old joke, “The difference between rape and ecstasy […]

The non-factual letter by Undersecretary of Interior Rebecca Watson was typical BushCO arrogance (HCN, 2/21/05: HCN has it wrong on Bush). The HCN rebuttal was excellent. Here are five concrete examples of the Bush assault on public lands: This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Bush, Cheney, and the […]

My wife and I just returned from a late winter trip to Yellowstone National Park, and as an ardent greenie and retired employee of the Department of Interior, I must admit the new rules for snowmobile use are a good compromise for us all. I have to give Gale Norton thumbs up on this one. […]

I’ve been patiently reading your teary editorials and now an entire issue on the death of environmentalism (HCN, 2/21/05: Where were the environmentalists when Libby needed them most?). Political rubbish! Talk to the private people on the ground, the people like me who are “doing it” every day, year in and year out. I’ve put […]

What’s wrong with centigrade for degrees C? (as noted by Charles Miller in “Corrections,” HCN, 3/7/05). After all, the scale covers 100 degrees, from ice to steam at sea level. I suppose it was invented by somebody called Celsius; I prefer the more explanatory centigrade, or just °C. Being corrected for using that is nonsense; […]

I kept hoping as I read “The Death of Environmentalism” that Shellenberger and Nordhaus meant their title literally, that the repetitive thud of the word across their text would lead them to suggest burying the word. They didn’t. But I will. Let’s stop using “environmentalism.” It’s a lousy word, not least for its harsh embedded […]

I’d like to respond to one of your letter-writers, D.D. Sparks, in the Jan. 24, 2005, issue. Sparks hopes “that those who become so passionate about the environment realize there are other people in the world besides themselves.” I would have thought that any reader of High Country News would already know this fact, but […]

At a time when the morale of the environmental community is at such a low point, why do Ray Ring and the editor wish to feature a story casting aspersions and fomenting factional bickering? One is led to believe that behind every issue, especially here in Montana where I have lived and worked as an […]

Let’s see if I have Ray Ring’s point of view right: Powerful resource extraction corporations spend years demonizing environmentalists. Not-very-sophisticated locals join the powerful and spend years speaking ill of “damn environmentalists.” Local enviros move on to other “opportunities.” Is Ray Ring telling us we should feel guilty for not assisting those whose lack of […]

I work as an environmentalist and as a geologist. I worked as a geologist at the Hamilton vermiculite mine mentioned in the Libby, Mont., article, when exploration and permitting was in progress (HCN, 2/21/05: Where were the environmentalists when Libby needed them most?). At a community meeting, I heard the managers tell officials and the […]

As an environmental scientist who has been working on related issues for 30 years, I’ve never felt myself a member of any “movement,” and I would surmise that few of my practicing colleagues do either. On Earth Day, we’re generally out doing something besides marching in parades and selling T-shirts. If the “movement” as it […]

Ray Ring’s bizarre exercise in contorted logic raises the bar of non-sequitur journalism to dizzying new heights. But then, that should have been expected, given the fatuously malignant banner lead on your Feb. 21 cover: “Have Environmentalists Failed the West?” What’s next, HCN? “Did Seismologists Fail the Sumatrans?” Or maybe … “Did Firemen Fail the […]

High Country News asks: “Where were the environmentalists when Libby, Mont. needed them most?” (HCN, 2/21/05: Where were the environmentalists when Libby needed them most?). However, the more interesting question, closer to the bone, is: “Where were the labor unions?” As Montana’s congressman for 18 years, I knew many of the miners from W.R. Grace’s […]