As summer weather breaks in the West and ushers in a cool and moist fall, all of us are breathing a sigh of relief. At the same time we cannot avoid being haunted by the question of whether there is something we ought to be doing to reduce the wildfire threat. Any rational response to […]
Thomas Michael Power
Posted inFebruary 4, 2002: Last dance for the sage grouse?
Post-cowboy economy not a Barbie Doll world
Dear HCN, We offer the following comments in response to Ed Marston’s cultural critique of our recent book, Post-Cowboy Economics: Pay and Prosperity in the New West (HCN, 12/17/01: Economics with a heart, but no soul). Healthy natural landscapes do not merely provide “playgrounds” and “pretty” amenities for “soulless” in-migrants. They provide a broad range […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Montana economist attacks review
Dear HCN, I want to thank Ed Marston for confirming the wise-use movement’s characterization of me as an “eco-terrorist” (HCN, 12/23/96). The mining and logging industries will get good mileage out of the idea that I am a “Robespierre” leading a “reign of terror” across the West. My book, Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies, sought […]
Posted inOctober 14, 1996: Greens prune their message to win the West's voters
Custom and culture’s worst enemy speaks
The West is certainly changing, but cultural beliefs rather than economic facts tend to dominate our dialogue. Because those beliefs are tied to a vision of a good society rooted in stereotypes of a simpler, less-corrupted-by-evil America, I see them as a type of economic fundamentalism. Consider these characteristics: Worshipping at the rearview mirror. Economic […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Two tales of a single county
Dear HCN, In your recent article (“Beauty and the Beast,” HCN, 4/14/97), Paul Larmer painted a rather bleak picture of the Kane County, Utah, economy. That negative economic portrait was part of an effort to explain why it was “no wonder everyone was hopping mad when the president took that hope (of the Andalex coal […]