Real-time response to demand could radically shift how the grid operates.
Northwest
Posted inArticles
Don’t drink the water
Portland’s fluoridation battle shows how tricky it is to integrate science into debates that have as much to do with values as policy.
Posted inArticles
Watershed moment
The U.S. and Canada prepare to renegotiate the 50-year-old Columbia River Treaty.
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
The bloody, brave beginnings of the Northwest
Review of ‘The Bully of Order’ by Brian Hart.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Watching the world slip away
How our children respond to a world threatened by climate change.
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
Idaho’s sewer system is the Snake River
As Big Ag flourishes, this massive waterway suffers.
Posted inGoat
Washington’s new clean-water plan is a mixed bag
Washington’s governor last week announced a bold approach for creating cleaner, safer waters for fish and the people who eat them. Unless he didn’t. Every day, the state’s Department of Health releases a map of waterways so polluted that restrictions are placed on the amount and types of fish people should eat. Washington has many […]
Posted inArticles
What’s killing the Yukon’s salmon?
An ecological mystery in Alaska has scientists and fishermen baffled and alarmed.
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
The Latest: Coal companies seek export terminals beyond the Northwest
BackstoryCoal companies, frustrated by environmental regulations and growing competition from natural gas producers, have long hoped to expand their market by exporting coal to Asia. So far, however, they’ve been stymied by Western opposition, from Montana ranchers battling new rail lines to Washington residents fighting coastal terminals (“Coal-export schemes ignite unusual opposition, from Wyoming to […]
Posted inGoat
Against all odds, wolf OR7 may have found a mate
On May 3, a wolf slipped through the frame of a remote camera in southwestern Oregon, a blur of black and brown. The next day, under the cover of darkness, it stared directly at a camera, eyes aglow, and did something ordinary that, under the circumstances, was an extraordinary sight: It squatted and peed. This […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
Geoduck fishermen switch to urchins off Washington’s coast
China banned West Coast shellfish after finding traces of toxins.
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
The Latest: Fish & Wildlife to shoot thousands of barred owls
BackstoryAfter the northern spotted owl hit the endangered species list in 1990, recovery plans focused on curtailing logging in its old-growth habitat. But when the population failed to bounce back, biologists began to consider removing barred owls, a similar Eastern species that’s been invading the spotted owl’s Pacific Northwestern territory. A 2008 recovery plan, later […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
Cut to the past: logging wars resume
Less than three years after the Clinton administration devised a plan to protect most of the remaining ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest, the big trees have started to fall again. Taking advantage of an obscure provision in a salvage logging bill recently signed by the president, loggers have begun cutting healthy old-growth forests west […]