Battered by their own success, farmers form the ‘OPEC of Potatoes’
Matt Jenkins
Posted inJune 11, 2007: Brave New Hay
Brave New Hay
Is Monsanto erasing the line between what is natural and what is not?
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Into thin air?
Global warming has spawned a call for new dams — but there may not be any water to fill them.
Posted inMarch 5, 2007: Wish You Weren’t Here
Stream leases languish
Efforts to privatize instream-flow protection fall short
Posted inFebruary 5, 2007: The Efficiency Paradox
The Efficiency Paradox
Why water conservation along the Colorado River — a much-vaunted silver bullet for the West’s coming era of shortage — could have devastating environmental costs
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
How to be #1 in the world and still be a loser
On one level, Giles Slade’s new book, Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, can be read as the played-straight history of the demise of things like the paper shirt front, tailfins on cars, and the pinball machine. Slade ranges considerably wider than his title lets on, however, and raises fundamental questions about the […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Excremental gains?
A stink over ‘sludge’ raises larger questions
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
River Redux
Thanks to a historic and grudging compromise, water and salmon head back to the San Joaquin River, six decades after they were taken out.
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
On the ballot: Will Californians vote to build an off-ramp from the oil highway?
Californians will find more than a dozen initiatives on their ballot this Nov. 7, including one aimed at helping them kick the oil habit. Proposition 87 would raise $4 billion over 10 years for the California Energy Alternatives Program Authority by taxing oil produced in the state. Part of an effort to reduce oil consumption […]
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
Getting out of the office, and into hot water
NAME Jeff Mount VOCATION Geology professor AGE 52 HOME BASE Davis, California KNOWN FOR Pointing out that building houses below sea level and surrounding them with weak levees is a recipe for disaster MOST RECENT EXPLOIT On a dare from his son, giving up his raft to kayak the Grand Canyon this summer: “I saw […]
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
A River Once More
In Oregon, an unprecedented alliance is working to put water someplace it hasn’t been in a long time: in the river.
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
How to save a creek… one drop at a time
An overview of Whychus Creek restoration projects, including flow restoration and habitat restoration projects
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Waterblogged
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “The myth trafficker,” in a special issue about community media in the West. Water in the West is a bit like Tibetan Buddhism: Everybody claims to be interested in it, but few people have the patience to figure out what it’s about. […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
The wet Net
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “The myth trafficker,” in a special issue about community media in the West. John Orr created the “Coyote Gulch” blog in 2002 to follow Denver-area politics, but the following November, that topic converged with his other love — Colorado water. Voters were […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Sleepers
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “The myth trafficker,” in a special issue about community media in the West. If you’re a paper-and-staples kind of person, several magazines and newsletters provide good independent commentary on water, including the Water Education Foundation’s Western Water magazine, the University of Arizona’s […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
Running on empty in Sin City
The Colorado River states pin thirsty hopes on Las Vegas’ lust for Great Basin groundwater
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
Undoing the myth of Western exceptionalism
Despite vociferous opposition from the California Chamber of Commerce, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R, and Democrat state legislators cemented a deal Aug. 30 to pass the Global Warming Solutions Act. California is the world’s twelfth-largest producer of global-warming causing greenhouse gases, and the bill commits the state to cutting those emissions 25 percent by 2020. It’s […]
Posted inWotr
California steps up to lead the nation
Despite vociferous opposition from the California Chamber of Commerce, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R, and Democrat state legislators cemented a deal on Aug. 30 to pass the much-heralded Global Warming Solutions Act. California is the world’s twelfth-largest producer of global-warming causing greenhouse gases, and the bill commits the state to cutting its greenhouse-gas emissions 25 percent […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Wilderness cliffhanger
Three compromise bills pass the House, await Senate approval
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Where there’s fire, there’s global warming
“I think there was a tendency to think that the overwhelming factor (driving forest fires) was short-term weather. There’s this idea that drought matters, and it does. But it’s taking time and a lot of research to show that climate plays a big role as well.” — Anthony Westerling Six years ago, climate scientist Anthony […]