The coral reef that once lived in the 700,000-gallon tank of ocean water in the Arizona desert, hauled in from Belize after breaking off in a storm in the late 1980s, is now pretty much dead. It met the same fate as another Biosphere 2 experiment, which involved eight men and women living off their […]
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BP energy review reveals lingering addiction to fossil fuels
The 2014 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, released this month, is a rather dry document made up of spreadsheets and a few charts filled with stats on global energy production and consumption during 2013. But look behind the numbers, and what you’ll find is anything but dull: A detailed accounting of how much energy […]
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Fuzzy math clouds carbon emission numbers
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 […]
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New Mexico is getting lucky so far this fire season
Southern Californians are currently experiencing a phenomenon they call June Gloom, when the humid, hazy air that usually hangs out just above the ocean blows inland and lingers, trapped by a warm layer above it. Oh, what the good people of New Mexico would have given in recent years for that brand of gloom. Instead, […]
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Reasons for massive starfish dieoff still unknown
Here’s some shocking news: Since last fall, when I first wrote about Pacific sea stars falling victim to a mysterious disease, turning into goo and dying, the aptly-named “starfish wasting syndrome” has not – as scientists hoped – subsided on its own. It’s gotten much, much worse. How much worse, you ask? Well, from the […]
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Sons of Wichita: understanding the enigmatic Koch brothers
The Koch brothers have become a household names in the past decade. Three out of four brothers are major players in energy development in the West and across the country. Two are powerbrokers for the conservative right and have been at the forefront of bringing libertarianism into the political mainstream. In the energy and political […]
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EPA carbon regulations will not destroy the electrical grid
Just days after the Obama administration announced it would implement rules to cut carbon emissions from existing power plants, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Ak., bemoaned the collateral damage the so-called war on coal would have on the electrical grid. “I am greatly concerned EPA’s rules – particularly in combination with one another – will result in […]
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Is immigration reform an environmental issue?
The question of whether humanity can expand indefinitely without running roughshod over the very environment it depends on once stood at the center of the American environmental movement. Public concern reached a fever pitch after the Sierra Club published Paul Ehrlich’s bestselling The Population Bomb in 1968. Within that debate quietly lurked questions about how […]
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The West’s crucial 2014 U.S. Senate races
The big question of the 2014 midterm elections — other than, “Eric Cantor lost?!” — is which party will emerge with control of the U.S. Senate. A number of Western states will host Senate races this year – Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Alaska – but only three will be hotly contested, […]
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Dispatch from Yosemite: Honoring national parks’ black heritage
In the fading light of a late spring evening, gospel singer Sista Monica Parker sat humming on a bench at the Yellow Pines Campground in Yosemite National Park. There she waited patiently for others to gather. Quiet at first, her melodic voice gained strength as she swayed to the rhythm of a hymn perhaps not […]
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25 years after raid, reflections on Rocky Flats
Outside the Arvada Center not far north of Denver, Colorado, this past weekend stood a larger-than-life-sized sculpture of a horse in a respirator and hazmat suit. Activists, scientists, academics, ranchers and local citizens young and old – but mostly older – walked past the horse, an artist’s interpretation of the toxic legacy of the long-closed […]
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Infographic: Hey, Wildlife Services — what did you kill?
Earlier this month, Wildlife Services, the U.S. Department of Agriculture division responsible for animal control, released data indicating that it killed over four million creatures in 2013 — a million more than it did the previous year. The agency, whose stated mission is to provide “leadership and expertise to resolve wildlife conflicts,” undertakes plenty of […]
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Wildland firefighting takes funding from other vital programs
A new federal report this week shows how dollars meant for forest restoration and wildfire preparedness often get diverted to fighting wildfires. It’s been that way for years, and as fires get bigger and more expensive to fight, the problem only gets worse. As we reported last summer: “Just a few days before (the Rim […]
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Railroads inch toward transparency on oil shipments
On April 18, a wildflower photographer looking for blooming balsamroot on the Oregon slopes of the Columbia River Gorge happened to glance down and see dozens of black tankers barreling along the railroad below. The identification numbers on the tankers’ warning signs revealed that they were carrying crude. Yet despite tragic derailments in the past […]
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Booms have a lasting impact on towns’ architectural fabric
On a trans-Wyoming reporting trip several years ago, I pulled off the interstate to check out the little town of Rawlins in the southern part of the state. I made my way past the industrial sprawl towards whatever kind of “downtown” I could find. When I finally arrived at the historic core, I was struck […]
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Bark beetle video series says there’s hope amid the carnage
The mountain pine beetle is perhaps the most infamous creepy-crawly in the Western United States. No larger than a grain of rice, the bug drills into trees and infects them with a blue fungus that makes them die of thirst. They’ve bored and left for dead millions of trees and affected 30 million acres in […]
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Climate change expedites hybrid trout takeover
When two species mate, their offspring end up with undignified new names like ‘pizzly’ (a grizzly and polar bear pairing) or ‘sparred owl’ (for barred owl and spotted owl hybrids). But the more rare species in such couplings face a far worse fate – hybridization can be a path to extinction. That’s why hybridization is […]
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Congress considers largest dam removal in U.S. history
This week, Congress is looking at a bill that even a few years ago seemed wildly, laughably improbable: an authorization to spend $250 million to implement a reworked version of the historic 2010 Klamath River agreements. The Senate bill is a mere 42 words long, but it seeks nothing less than to seal the fate […]
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Are invasive species really that terrible?
The West’s approach to managing invasive species has, for the most part, been a straightforward one: eradicate them swiftly and at all costs. Spray ‘em, poison ‘em, net ‘em, douse ‘em with fungus, and, when all else fails, eat ‘em – whatever the method, the important thing is that the invader is sent packing. But […]
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How to cut carbon: Change the way utilities make money
State renewable energy standards, imposed on “investor-owned” utilities that supply 75 percent of the power in the United States, have long stood stalwart in the space left empty by the absence of a federal energy or climate policy. They have devalued climate-changing coal and encouraged wind and solar, particularly in the West, where the kind […]