Wotr

A collaborative online effort allows both skeptics and believers to study and compare the facts.

Ed Abbey’s spirit lives in today’s eco-activists

Once, during a time when I was separated from my wife, I lived in an apartment complex with a large and inviting swimming pool. One day, when I went to take relief from the heat at that glistening oasis, I found it fouled by motor oil. The apartment manager was there, shaking her head, speculating […]

As a kid growing up in Colorado, I was crazy about wild horses. I read books about mustangs and drew pictures of them. In school, I was thrilled to learn about the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act, which was passed in 1971, after “Wild Horse Annie” saw bleeding mustangs being hauled off to slaughter […]

During the 16th century when conquistadors crossed the ocean from the Old World to the New, their ships often became stranded along the equator at a place where the winds stopped blowing. To lighten their load, they would throw horses overboard. Eventually, the sails would fill with air and the voyage could continue.  Over time, […]

Our mountain is burning in a fire that we hoped would never happen, a fire that has been hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles. The heart of our mountain is blazing in an inferno that grew from 50 acres to 5,000 acres in 24 hours. As I write this, it has torched […]

Before utility executives and solar-energy prospectors discovered the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, it was mostly known for its potatoes, Buddhist hermitages and scrappy water wars. Now our high-desert rift valley is home to a clash between two competing visions for Colorado’s renewable energy future. As utilities and their regulators argue over who is […]

“The task is great. So is the need. And there is no time to lose,” said Exxon executives in their infamous “White Paper” of 1980. Those bombastic words came at the conclusion of Exxon’s plan to help solve the nation’s energy crisis of the 1970s. Long lines at the pump and oil embargoes had prompted […]

The Mancos Valley reverberates with the gush of its namesake river in an annual rite of spring runoff.  These waters are a perfect metaphor for starting a new life — allowing winter’s rigidity to melt and wash away. In this high mountain ranching valley of Colorado, the first water flows through irrigation spigots and onto […]

My first introduction to Colorado’s 14,421-foot Mount Massive was, quite literally, a pile of crap. Several piles, actually, just off the trailhead where I’d wandered to pee. Some were flagged with toilet paper; others disguised with a thin sprinkling of pine needles. I walked with care. It was a skill that I would have to […]

California condors are back

Wranglers, snap shirts, and cowboy hats — horse optional.

Trust us, the industry giants keep saying as they try to assure us they can mine the earth without harming it. Trust us, for we have the best technology now and have learned from our mistakes. Trust us, for we have every possible safeguard in place for every event that could go terribly wrong. Trust […]

A dozen miles from Lake Powell, up the Dirty Devil River, our canoes enter the old lake-bottom layer. Dirt banks rise above our heads, and the turbid river churns through an alley bounded by sand walls. Bend by tight bend we cut deeper into the canyon of fine sands. On top, a fringe of tamarisk […]

I’m 59 years old.  I’ve been a professional photographer for 40 years.  And now I’m done.  Not because I’m retired, but because I’ve outlived my profession. Technological change has met economic downturn in a perfect storm in which I am sinking.  The same seismic shifts have transformed music, journalism, design and publishing.  This revolution has […]

Twenty years ago, many car bumpers in Colorado sported a no-holds-barred sticker: “Dam the Denver Water Board.” It was easy enough to dislike the agency then. It was big — Colorado’s largest water utility and one of the largest in the West — and it reflexively used its political muscle and economic sway to realize […]

Having lived in Colorado for all of my 59 years, I’ve certainly suffered from immigration. It’s cost me a job or two because immigrants from the East Coast went to better schools and boasted more impressive résumés. I’ve had to compete against well-heeled California immigrants for housing. After these immigrants settle in, they assault our […]