We have the technology to generate electricity from renewable resources, but most of our machines, from blow driers to conveyor belts, continue to run on coal. That’s because it is easier to create renewable energy than to transport it. Rigging a new power line from, say, a remote Nevada wind farm to a population center […]
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Posted inGoat
Move over, chickens!
Wyoming’s industrious animal husbanders – who raise everything from cattle to pigs to yaks – will soon have yet another creature to cultivate. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission is now formulating rules for sage grouse farming. It all began with State Senator Kit Jennings, R-Casper, who initially proposed a $50,000 pilot program for farming […]
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The Red Desert
While much of the West took on a blue hue last night, staunchly Republican Utah stuck to its guns. McCain won by 63 percent of the vote, making Utah his strongest supporter after Wyoming. Incumbent Republican governor John Huntsman ran away with 78 percent of the vote. Of the three Congressional races, incumbents won two. […]
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Nevada’s swing to the left
Swing state Nevada went Dem in the Presidential elections, by a margin of some 12 percentage points. The results were a shocker for some, but if you take a look at the county-by-county results you see that only Washoe and Clark Counties, home to the population centers of Reno and Las Vegas, went for Obama. […]
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When spines aren’t enough
To combat cactus rustlers — who can sell the saguaros to landscapers — the National Park Service is planning to imbed microchips into Arizona’s most enticing specimens. Once past the planning stages, officials at Saguaro National Park will begin injecting the cacti with dime-sized chips. Rangers will be equipped with magic microchip wands. Wave one […]
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Diamonds in the Rockies
Molybdenum. Uranium. Silver, gold, copper, coal. You name it and Colorado has probably mined it. Now a company called DiamonEx wants to exploit those mineral-rich mountains for diamonds. The Australia-based company is seeking a permit for exploratory drilling in Larimer County, along the Front Range. DiamonEx says they hope to mine as many diamonds as […]
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Out of the woods?
The Senate Finance Committee has come up with a new bill which would extend the Secure Rural Schools Act. Secure Rural Schools, enacted in 2000, was a response to the decline in logging in the 1990s. Counties that once depended on a share of the timber profits from their federal lands saw their budgets plummet […]
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Fending off the gold diggers
Today the Colorado Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on a case that could take away local government discretion on mining operations. The court must decide whether counties have the right to prohibit open-pit cyanide gold mining by adopting land-use regulations. (The Colorado Mining Association, an industry group, sued Summit County after it passed such […]
Posted inDnc 08
A seat at the policy table
When we came in the door, a greeter saw our press passes and grasped my hand for longer than is customary. “We need you,” she said. “We need you.” This unusually personal reception was perhaps apt — it soon became evident that the underlying theme of the event was the invisibility of Native Americans on […]
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The many faces of protest at the DNC
From anti-abortion activists to 9/11 conspiracy theorists to Hillary supporters, the convention is hopping with protesters.
Posted inDnc 08
The entrepreneurs
A crowd stood at the corner of Blake Street and the 16th Street Mall on Monday, flanking a pushcart overflowing with t-shirts. A painfully cheery young man named Toby wore one that was blazoned with the Qdoba Mexican Grill cartoon cactus. On the front it said “Burritos for Obama.” Other t-shirts offered up quesadillas and […]
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Kiss your tail goodbye, desert pupfish
The Bush administration is preparing to deliver a sucker punch to the Endangered Species Act. A new proposal would hand over the responsibility of protecting endangered species from federal projects like dams and highways to the federal agencies themselves. Under current law, agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management and the Corps of Engineers […]
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Southern California’s Briny Beast
The long-suffering Salton Sea, notorious for its massive bird and fish die-offs, is finally to be put on an intravenous drip. A key committee in California’s state Assembly approved a bill last week that would provide $47 million to begin restoring the salty sink to some semblance of health. The full Assembly is expected to […]
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Hula in the high country
On the surface, not much remains of Iosepa, a Polynesian settlement of Mormon converts that briefly flourished in Utah’s Skull Valley. A few gravestones and a fire hydrant linger in the desert where once more than 200 Hawaiians, Samoans and other Pacific Islanders settled to be closer to the mother church in the late 19th […]
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Survival or bust
The Quino checkerspot, a pretty patchwork butterfly native to the scrubland of southern California, is not doing so well. The butterfly has been listed as endangered since 1997 and only a few small populations remain. But a group of biologists have a suggestion for how the Quino—and other organisms on the brink of extinction—might be […]
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The many faces of rural America
Rural America is no longer Norman Rockwell’s version, if it ever was. Such is the lesson of a recent report by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, a policy research center that focuses on rural communities. The report, entitled Place Matters: Challenges and Opportunities in Four Rural Americas, makes clear that it […]
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Wanted: Dead or Mostly Dead
“The common understanding of the term ‘live’ is, quite simply, ‘not dead.’” It may sound like something out of a Monty Python movie, but the above is actually a portion of the plaintiff’s argument in a U.S. Court of Appeals case decided last month in the Ninth Circuit. Environmentalists had issued a challenge to salvage […]
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Of parks and particulates
In yet another goodwill gesture to the energy industry, the feds are proposing to loosen air quality restrictions in some national parks and wilderness areas. The EPA’s new rule would change the way in which emissions are reported, allowing power plants to substitute an annual average in place of averages for shorter periods, such as […]