Summer features its best impression of Hades as we enter August. You feel like you’re awakening from a bad, slow-moving dream, one in which the cat has settled on your face, and you can’t wake up enough to move it, but neither can you breathe. That’s the way midsummer makes me feel. Denver’s weather is […]
Allen Best
Posted inWotr
Who gets to produce electricity is galvanizing the West
Plans are on the drawing table for another wave of coal-fired power plants across the West. But unlike 25 to 30 years ago, during the last binge in building power plants, this time there is opposition from a critical source — local ratepayers. This opposition should not be over-stated. In most areas, the electrical co-ops […]
Posted inWotr
Knee-jerking in western Colorado
In 1917, during the height of anti-German propaganda in this country, the essayist H.L. Mencken wrote a history of the bathtub. He said President Millard Fillmore had installed the first bathtub in the White House — a brave act given that medical professionals believed bathtubs to be “certain inviters of phthisic, rheumatic fevers, inflammation of […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
The hidden costs of our coal habit
Sometimes ignorance feels like bliss. When you’re stowing your breakfast eggs and sausage, you don’t want to think too much about their origins. But ignorance is also dangerous. Take, for example, the electricity that powers the stove and coffeepot behind your morning breakfast. Today, more than half of U.S. electricity comes from burning coal. This […]
Posted inWotr
The new pariahs
Walking by a tavern in the late evening, seeing smokers clumped outside the door, their shoulders hunched in the cold, puffing furtively, I’m not sure what to think. In the temper of our times, I suppose I should be pitying, maybe even scornful, looking down my nose at the wretches, slave to a demon weed, […]
Posted inWotr
The underbelly of prosperity in the resort West is illegal labor
The public affairs director for Park City, Utah, Myles Rademan, tells a story about tourists on a ski vacation asking him for directions to a Mexican restaurant. His answer: “They’re all Mexican restaurants. Go into the kitchen of any restaurant, whether it’s American, Italian or Chinese, and the people cooking the food are Mexicans.” I […]
Posted inWotr
Lake Powell gets an A for boating and a D for water storage
It’s fun in the sun as usual at Lake Powell, as this summer follows another in a pattern of drought in the 21st century. But though the reservoir has plenty of water for boating, its primary purpose is to store water for the American Southwest. By that criterion, Lake Powell is a bust at 52 […]
Posted inWotr
Death in the backcountry
News accounts about fatal avalanches — and we’ve had nine deaths in the West this winter — sometimes give the impression that the difference between life and death is one easy piece of technology: an avalanche beacon. If only the buried victim had been wearing a beacon, goes the story line, a life could have […]
Posted inWotr
Arson on Vail Mountain returns to the news
Arson is a difficult crime to prove, so it’s no surprise that the federal government only recently named two suspects in the 1998 fires that caused $12 million in damage atop the Vail ski area. The 28-year-old suspects, who both grew up in Eugene, Ore., have not been charged, let alone found guilty, of anything […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
Westerners slowly adapt to high prices
But what will it take to really make a change?
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Back On Track
One of the West’s most sprawling, traffic-choked cities becomes a champion of mass transit — and a cleaner, greener future
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Commuter trains could connect the West’s far-flung cities
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” Even as light-rail lines promise to revolutionize transportation within the West’s metropolitan areas, longer commuter rails could connect these far-flung cities in ways they have not since railroad’s glory days a century ago. Unlike light rail, which uses overhead electrical lines, […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Reading, riding and relaxing
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” Kevin Koernig believes light rail is making him healthy, wealthy and maybe even wise — or at least well read. Koernig lives in Littleton, a suburb along Denver’s southwest light-rail line, and commutes by train several days a week to his […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
A city center in the suburbs
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” On weekdays, Charlie Lybrand’s car doesn’t budge from its parking space. A student of economics at Denver’s Metropolitan State College, Lybrand lives in an apartment complex in the suburb of Englewood. Just out the door is a light-rail station. “I use […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Light rail moves inland from the ‘Left Coast’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” On any given Sunday afternoon in Salt Lake City, Utah, families in their shirt-and-tie finest queue up at light-rail stations near the Mormon temple. On a Saturday night, fans of the Utah Jazz, the city’s professional basketball team, disembark for a […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Be a patriot — get your hands dirty
While foraging through my backyard garden the other day for cucumbers, peppers and hot-to-touch chiles, a slogan occurred to me: “Support Our Troops — Plant a Garden.” Gardening was as distant from my life as Afghanistan until I bought a house seven years ago. My newly acquired yard had bluegrass in the middle and a […]
Posted inWotr
Be a patriot — get your hands dirty
While foraging through my backyard garden the other day for cucumbers, peppers and hot-to-touch chilis, a slogan occurred to me: “Support Our Troops – Plant a Garden.” A garden would demonstrate patriotism because each backyard Eden lessens our dependence upon imported oil. Of course, by itself, imported oil isn’t bad, but an addiction so intense […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
The end of exurbia: An interview with James Howard Kunstler
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “How dense can we be?“ James Howard Kunstler has made a reputation for himself as a critic of America’s auto-dependent suburbs, first with his 1993 book, The Geography of Nowhere, and then his 1996 book, Home From Nowhere. Now, he is taking aim at […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
How dense can we be?
Living the good life in the ‘exurbs’ is draining our tax coffers and devouring the West’s open spaces, but large-lot development continues to explode
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
The best of both worlds
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “How dense can we be?“ George Abramajtis is a man of extremes. He grew up at sea level in the New York borough of Queens, and even after he got married, the view from his bedroom window was of a brick wall six feet […]