Yesterday I read, “What every westerner should know about oil shale,” a report published last week by the University of Colorado’s Center of the American West. It left my ears ringing with a sort of dull reverberation that, while it lasted, actually seemed to be getting louder. I think that ringing sound had something to […]
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Going it alone
It’s fairly common knowledge that the poor, though they’ve released far less than their share of the world’s greenhouse gasses, will feel the nastiest effects of climate change. Usually, we take “the poor,” in this case, to mean residents of Tuvalu, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea or other developing states whose governments lack the resources or […]
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Give me your huddled masses…
If America is the land of beckoning opportunity, Mexico is the land of bargain operations — and cheap dental care, and sensibly-priced treatments for chronic illness. At least, that’s what Mexico is to about a million Californians each year. A group of researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles recently added another scuff […]
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In salty, seaside beaver ponds…
Greg Hood is a researcher in western Washington who knows a few things about salmon habitat — a few surprising things. When Hood talks about preserving threatened populations, he doesn’t mention in-stream flows, fish ladders or water temperatures. Instead, he brings up a mostly-vanished ecosystem than once lined significant portions of the Puget Sound. It […]
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John Sutter’s paramour was named Manuiki
Native American sovereignty, trans-Pacific tribal ties, an intriguing new twist to the Gold Rush and centuries-old gossip about John Sutter’s love life: all that in a surprising article that recently ran in the Sacramento Bee. It’s a must-read for anyone who gets a kick out of learning that western history is more complicated than most […]
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Get to know the locals
Encana has a bit of a reputation for looking out for wildlife. Though predictably, it’s an ambiguous one. High Country News has covered the oil and gas company’s efforts to trade habitat restoration dollars for sweetheart lease deals, and its practice of padding drill sites to minimize vegetation impacts. Those moves may not add up […]
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Blocked by concrete or killed by climate?
In the context of climate change, our energy appetite has shoved us into a corner. We’ve gotten used to a diet of cheap, energy-packed fossil fuels, and it will probably be impossible to find an alternative that doesn’t bring along its own set of environmental impacts: Solar arrays will damage deserts, wind farms decimate birds […]
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Watts or Wildfire
Here’s a new angle on fire in the west: one large southern California utility is trying to convince ratepayers that some regions of its service area are too fire-prone for uninterrupted electricity. Or at least, that’s the implication behind San Diego Gas and Electric’s proposal to unplug portions of its grid when there’s a high […]
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Subterranean seltzer water
In an ideal world, we’d be able to stash most of our planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions in underground formations, where they would turn to stone. As High Country News has reported in the past, the carbon in C02 can be incorporated into calcium carbonate, or limestone, through chemical reactions. That’s a good thing for climate […]
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Climate change is easy money
At their worst, carbon offsets are opaque, morally-ambiguous items that reek of guilt, arcane rites of penance and the potential for profiteering. When you buy an offset it’s hard to tell whether your money will actually be used to plant the promised grove of trees or install, for example, a slew of compact florescent light […]
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Fire from the faucet
“Shock” and “terror:” that’s how Colorado resident Amee Ellsworth feels about her tap water. The stuff stinks, it causes strange sounds in her toilet and washing machine; and worst of all, she’s afraid it’ll blow up her house. When she turns on her kitchen faucet and flicks a lighter, foot-high flames leap from the tap. […]
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Salvaging the “Fire Service”
Lawmakers are trying, for a second time, to toss a lifeline to the Forest Service. Ballooning fire-fighting costs and constrictive Bush-era budgets have been squeezing the soul (read: expenses other than fire retardant, hoses and helicopters) out of the agency. But last week, 12 senators and five U.S. reps, most of them from western states, […]
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Shale tests the waters
Between 105 and 315 million gallons of water per day: by current estimates, that’s the amount of water that could be swallowed by a 2.5-million-barrel-per-day-oil shale industry. It’s an impressive number, but a bit of an abstraction. For a more visceral take on the impacts of oil shale, take a look at the 25 opposition […]
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Crossed purposes in Wyoming?
On February 27, Wyoming passed a set of laws designed to flesh out a legal framework for burying carbon emissions in the geologic cavities, or “pore spaces,” that lie beneath significant portions of the state. The rules attempt to answer a few pertinent questions. Notably: Who will be responsible for the carbon once it’s been injected […]
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The rich black allure
Oil shale is kind of like online journalism — there’s such potential there, but from the looks of it, we may never figure out how to make a profitable industry of it. Which must partly explain the contradictions in Ken Salazar’s latest plans for the resource. Yesterday, the secretary of the interior announced he’ll be […]
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Put up yer dukes
The Western Business Roundtable hosted a conference call yesterday. It was touted as a “sneak peek” into a new analysis of the Western Climate Initiative. But if you’d dialed in hoping to hear a fresh critique of the cap-and-trade framework designed to encompass 90 percent of the emissions across much of the west and part […]
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Climate Bale Out
Stuart Strand takes climate change seriously, and I’m not just talking about the groovy recumbent bicycle he rides to work. The environmental engineer from the University of Washington was searching for a way to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere when he came across an intriguing report. Its authors suggested that annual […]
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A different outdoor game
Too little, too late. Shoot first, ask questions later… If you can shake your head in disgust while you say it, you’ve probably found the right cliche for the environmental fiasco that surrounds the wall on our southern border. The Department of Homeland Security recently agreed to fork over $50 million to the Interior Department […]
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Managing a busted climate
How do you manage for “natural” conditions when humans have twisted nature all out of pitch? If you’re trying to make decisions in an unprecedented situation, what experience do you lean on? These are a couple of the underlying concerns in a recent report from the federal Climate Change Science Program. The report focuses on climate-sensitive […]
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A midnight lease on the mesa
High Country News has reported on the Bush administration’s “midnight deregulations,” the host of hurried laws issued in the waning days of the administration, which – whether aimed at fisheries, air pollution, or oil shale – generally promise to benefit big business while undercutting environmental protections. But now that Obama’s in the oval office, some […]