President Obama’s announcement earlier this month of new regulations requiring reductions in carbon emissions from the nation’s coal-fired power plants brought the predictable howls of doom from industry representatives, conservatives and lawmakers from coal-producing states. “The president’s plan would indeed cause a surge in electricity bills — costs stand to go up $17 billion every […]
Jeremy Miller
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Peak water
Bigger reservoirs and deeper wells won’t end California’s water crisis
Posted inGoat
Making sense of the latest National Climate Assessment
Earlier this month, I traveled to northern Washington for a friend’s wedding. Weary from wandering the drought-racked farmlands in California’s Central Valley, I was kindly given permission by my wife to stay an extra day and revel in the green lushness of the Kitsap and Olympic Peninsulas. I set out early from my hotel in […]
Posted inArticles
The future of the Sacramento Delta hangs in the balance
But few Californians seem to grasp what is at stake.
Posted inMarch 3, 2014: Fallon’s deadly legacy
The geoglyph guardian
Alfredo Figueroa fights to protect ancient land art in southern California.
Posted inGoat
California’s drought is not about “fish versus farmers”
If there was a moment when the California drought fully entered the national media spotlight, it came earlier this month when President Obama swooped into California’s parched Central Valley and announced $200 million in federal emergency aid. The president’s visit came days after the announcement of a bill from California Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein and […]
Posted inGoat
Preserving ancient art in land marked for solar energy development
Like a great eye of reflective silicon, the largest utility-scale power plant in the United States is rapidly materializing in the Mojave Desert. According to company officials, when fully complete, the BrightSource Ivanpah Solar Power Facility will come on line early this year, supplying nearly 400 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 140,000 homes during […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
The shareable city: building a better legal foundation for urban sustainability
A conversation with a sharing economy guru.
Posted inGoat
New Year brings protections for California bobcats and atonement for a Joshua Tree conservationist
Wolves in several Western states entered 2014 in the crosshairs of hunters, but California’s bobcats got a reprieve – thanks in large part to one Joshua Tree landowner and conservationist. The Bobcat Protection Act of 2013 (AB 1213), introduced in March by Santa Monica assemblyman Richard Bloom (D), went into effect January 1. It prohibits […]
Posted inGoat
California fracking regulations proposal gets mixed response
Last week, California regulators proposed new rules to oversee hydraulic fracturing across the state, and depending on whom you ask, they are either a move toward stronger oversight of the extraction of the state’s oil reserves, or a thinly veiled capitulation to industry. The regulations come as a result of SB 4, which was introduced […]
Posted inArticles
Travels with migrant farmworkers
A conversation with Seth Holmes about on-the-ground research for his new book.
Posted inGoat
A man needs a parade
On a bat-streaked evening in April, I found myself on a bridge over the Colorado River, just outside Moab, holding a bright sign, contemplating the twilight of the fossil fuel age and the darkness of celebrity environmentalism. I was tired and sunburned, having arrived there after an eight-day float trip through Desolation Canyon with the […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
California farm communities suffer tainted drinking water
In California’s agricultural hub, the Central Valley, Latino communities fight for clean water.
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Oil boom spurs a rush on extractive education programs
Last May, Russell Carr crammed his possessions into his 4Runner and drove 30 hours to North Dakota, seeking a new start. The strapping 22-year-old had just earned a degree in civil engineering at the University of Nevada, in his hometown, Reno, but the local firm he’d been courting offered a starting wage of only $17 […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
The Bay Area Chevron explosion shows gaps in refinery safety
When a crude-processing unit at Chevron’s Richmond, Calif., refinery burst into flame in early August, sirens wailed through local neighborhoods as pillars of smoke blackened the sky over the city and surrounding hillsides. The plant’s emergency management system issued 18,000 calls to nearby residents, urging them to “shelter in place” — closing windows, sealing cracks […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Will Utah’s tar sands make it the Alberta of the high desert?
In a small alcove at the foot of eastern Utah’s Tavaputs Plateau is an old inscription left by French-Canadian mountain man Antoine Robidoux, one of the region’s earliest entrepreneurs. Chiseled into cream-colored sandstone, it reads: Passe ici le 13 Novembre, 1837Pour Etablire MaisonTraitte a la Rv. Vert ou Wiyte A few years earlier, Robidoux had […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Following the Old Spanish Trail across the Southwest
In his search for the routes used by the West’s early travelers, archaeologist Jack Pfertsh has become a detective of detritus. Today he’s on the hunt for old tin cans and fragments of purple and green glass. The mid-November sun is sinking as we walk the windswept land just north of Delta, Colo. Brown grasses […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
The endless atlas: A review of Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas
Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas Rebecca Solnit167 pages, softcover: $24.95.University of California Press, 2010. San Francisco author Rebecca Solnit’s latest release, Infinite City, can be loosely described as an atlas of her hometown. But Solnit is interested in far more than geographical representation, as she writes in the book’s foreword: “An atlas is a […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Fast Times at California’s Petroleum High
It’s fifth period, just after lunch, and the students of the Taft Oil Technology Academy are in a pickle. The Oildorado festival, a celebration held every five years in October to honor the California town’s patron industry, is already under way, and they still haven’t built their float for Saturday’s parade. And this year’s Oildorado […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2010: Toxic Past, Toxic Present
Oil and Water Don’t Mix with California Agriculture
KERN COUNTY, CALIFORNIA From the “Petroleum Highway” — a rutted, dusty stretch of California State Route 33 — you can see the jostling armies of two giant industries. To the east, relentless rows of almonds and pistachios march to the horizon. To the west, an armada of oil wells sweeps to the foothills of the […]