It’s been a big week for nuclear power. First there was the conspicuous nuclear shout-out in the State of the Union last Wednesday, followed by the White House announcement, on Friday, that the Energy Department will explore new solutions for coping with nuclear waste. Then, yesterday, the administration released its budget proposal, with a plan […]
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Less parking, better air — a la carte
I salivate over wide-open spaces. Bliss, for me, is a sprawling view of distant ranges and crisp horizons—or a free, fortuitous curbside parking spot five minutes before a crowded event. Yet my environmental better half knows that “free parking” isn’t free, and that there are plenty of other types of euphoria to be had, like […]
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Environmental justice: A vision for change
“The environment for us is where we live, work and play.” Jeanne Gauna, the SouthWest Organizing Project’s co-founder and longtime co-director, crystallized the inspiration and sentiment of the environmental justice movement with this simple yet profound idea. In addition to transforming and reinvigorating the environmental, labor, indigenous and civil rights movements, environmental justice established a […]
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Cows vs. RATs
The Forest Service and the BLM have just announced the 2010 fee for grazing one cow and calf on public land. Back in 1966, the fee was $1.23 per month. For comparison, here are the prices of some common items in 1966 and today: Item In 1966 Today New car $2,650 $23,000 Gallon […]
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EPA, Black Caucus announce environmental justice tour
“All environmental protection, like all politics, is quite local,” Environmental Protection Agency director Lisa Jackson told her staff this month. “Very few people come to environmental protection because they wake up one morning and read a book about it. They come to environmental protection because it touches them — the lack of that protection, a […]
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Still snowed in
An editorial in last weekend’s Arizona Daily Sun described the paper’s “awe” at emergency response to the epic storm that dumped more than four feet of snow on Flagstaff. But while life in the city goes back to normal, stranded residents in Indian country are still digging out. The West’s recent rash of apocalyptic weather […]
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Borderline environmental justice
Recently, the New York Times reported on immigration and drug traffic across the U.S.-Mexico border where it crosscuts the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona, a story HCN covered in-depth in 2007. The situation is horrific: strangers knock on doors to entice and scare tribal members into smuggling, while pervasive Border Patrol inconvenience and intimidate the […]
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They say it’s your birthday
Two years ago I celebrated my 40th birthday. I wasn’t thrilled about turning 40 (who is?) and couldn’t convince myself that a celebratory shindig was a good idea (all that attention). But in her quiet way, a close friend convinced me it needed to happen. On an April evening, friends filled the upstairs of the […]
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Western resource extraction, now and then
For four years Boston-based photographer Eirik Johnson, a Seattle native, travelled around Washington, Oregon, and northern California taking pictures of loggers and fishermen. His photographs, collected into the series “Sawdust Mountain,” are on display at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington until this Sunday. The series depicts the visual impact of natural […]
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Big cat boondoggle?
Alan Rabinowitz might be the last person you’d expect to denounce the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s recent decision to designate critical habitat for jaguars. Rabinowitz was instrumental in creating the world’s first jaguar preserve in Belize in the eighties. He’s the head honcho of Panthera, an organization with the “sole mission” of protecting wild […]
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Sundance, Redford and Obama
The Sundance Film Festival is underway at Park City, Utah. This year the annual event is being covered by the alternative media news program Democracy Now!. Today, Democracy Now aired an interview with Sundance founder and LA native Robert Redford. Redford was asked to describe Utah where he owns land and a home. He did […]
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The costs of coal
A controversial new report on the economics of Powder River Basin coal was written by a University of Wyoming economist — and paid for by the Wyoming Mining Association. As you might expect, the report provides some boosterish facts about coal:
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Of routes and rotors
Before migrating to Paonia, I spent time in the backwoods of southwestern Oregon, occasionally on the porch of a cabin with a colony of bats living under its shingles. Each afternoon, the walls began to creak and moan like old floorboards. Then the bats — hundreds of furry clamshell bodies — would slip out, unfurl, […]
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It may be the apocalypse. . .
2012? Whatever. Clearly the apocalypse is nigh-er than that. First, there’s the weather to consider. Wave after wave of Pacific storms have left Southern California’s beaches a creepy Mad-Maxian mess of shopping carts, plastic toys and other manmade flotsam that’s washed down from various megalopoli. It’s been the worst series of storms in five years, […]
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Tribal push to regulate Native ceremonies
When I first saw the headlines coming out of Arizona regarding a push to regulate tribal ceremonies, I couldn’t help but think tribal sovereignty might be in danger. But then I learned that the effort is coming from tribal leaders themselves in response to the three Sedona, AZ deaths and 19 illnesses that took place […]
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Frackin’ Fears
Yet another group is demanding that the federal government regulate hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”), the process used to extract oil and natural gas, because it threatens human health. In a report released yesterday, Drilling Around the Law, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) argues that fracking could contaminate drinking water supplies “from Pennsylvania to Wyoming,” but […]
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Attack of the dromedaries
It’s sunrise on the Colorado River, and a dozen sand-colored lumps stir by the banks. Bodies rise on spindly legs. Mouths open with a sound like pulling dentures. In a flash of gums, twelve sets of teeth clamp down on the nearest tamarisk plants. Chomp. Chomp. Leaves, bark and thorns disappear in a rhythm of […]
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Returning soon to a bookstore near you
By now you’ve likely read about the new movie Crazy Heart, which is getting good reviews and some Oscar buzz. Not having seen the movie (in my backwater, it will likely be on DVD before it gets to a theater near me), I can’t address it. But it’s based on the book by […]