Quiz: Utah’s Wasatch Front or Beijing? 1. Which area had the worst air quality in its respective nation during January 2013? 2. Which place prepared for hosting the Olympic games by expanding the public transit network? 3. Which region has real-time air quality data, frequently updated on Twitter? For answers, see the bottom of this page. […]
Climate change
Posted inFebruary 18, 2013: Farming on the Fringe
Sierra Club fights Keystone XL with civil disobedience
In 2004, Carl Pope, then-director of the Sierra Club, tangled publicly with Capt. Paul Watson, head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Pope was steering the club towards cooperative solutions to environmental problems, collaborating with large corporations instead of fighting them. Watson, an advocate of direct action whose group blocked environmental despoilers with living bodies […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
A new normal for snow
Idaho hydrologist Phil Morrisey has been fielding some complaints lately. Although the Natural Resources Conservation Service — the federal agency he works for — reports normal snowpack, skiers say they’re schussing through thin powder. And they have a point, Morrissey says: The agency just started using a new standard for measuring average snowfall — and […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Tree tales
I read Brendon Bosworth’s article on Fallen Leaf Lake with great interest (“The forest at the bottom of the lake,” HCN, 12/24/12). With my dive partner, John Foster, a retired California state archaeologist, I sampled sunken trees from nearby Tahoe and Donner Lake, mainly in the 1980s. In South Lake Tahoe, 16 rooted snags in ancient underwater […]
Posted inGoat
Public pollution data make for a less-filthy West
At the end of last year, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a long-stalled Clean Air Act standard to limit air pollution from cement kilns, which spew massive quantities of toxic mercury into the air — though the agency is drawing the ire of environmental groups for delaying implementation until 2015. One reason the public and […]
Posted inGoat
Get used to the new normal
There’s fine dust in the tire ruts now Along the old feed road They’re workin’ on a six year drought Just so you know -James McMurtry, “Six Year Drought” If it seems like there’s less snow on the ground than there used to be, it’s not your imagination. This year, the folks at the Natural […]
Posted inGoat
Reorganization or regression?
The New York Times made news last week when InsideClimate News reported it was dismantling its nine-person environmental news team. The reporters and editors on the environment desk, which has been around since 2009 and has its own section heading on the Times’ website, will not be laid off, but shuffled to other areas of […]
Posted inGoat
The climate conversation
You are a High Country News reader, and thus, unlikely to be a subscriber to People magazine. But try as you might to stay above the pop culture fray, you’ve probably heard by now: Princess Kate is pregnant. She craves lavender shortbread. She is not, it turns out, too thin to be pregnant, though the […]
Posted inGoat
A bridge to nowhere?
Early into the new year, researchers measuring methane leaks from natural gas fields in Utah found that far more of the climate-forcing gas was being emitted than they thought (methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat). Preliminary results from that research, in the Uinta Basin, show that 9 percent of […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
An underwater forest reveals the story of a historic megadrought
A curved tree saw in his gloved hand, a scuba tank on his back, Phil Caterino worked quickly to slice through a pine branch 100 feet below the surface of a small tarn south of Lake Tahoe. Bubbles streamed from the regulator in his mouth, rising through the blue alpine water and green flecks of […]
Posted inGoat
The future of our forests
I recently got an email from a reader who was considering moving to Flagstaff. With its excellent bike trails, university, and a populace full of outdoor nuts, it sounded like a pretty nice spot. So he paid a visit, and while there, sought out the answer to a big question: “I needed to know when 100 […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Can the oyster industry survive ocean acidification?
For four frustrating months in 2007, Mark Wiegardt and his wife, Sue Cudd, witnessed something unsettling at their Oregon oyster hatchery: tank bottoms littered with dead baby oysters. Usually, the larvae are grown until they’re three weeks old and a quarter of a millimeter in size — 10 million bunched together are roughly the size […]
Posted inGoat
Dispersing the toxicity
It’s every coastal community’s nightmare. An off-shore oil rig explodes, a tanker runs aground, and the name of their town — Homer, Alaska, say — becomes synonymous with the latest disaster of our oil-besotted age. When such a disaster does happen, oil spill responders are faced with many choices about how to contain the spill […]
Posted inWotr
Here come the Super Storms
Once again, we were all New Yorkers. Watching the heartbreak that continues in Staten Island, parts of Queens and along the pummeled Jersey Shore, our sympathies turned eastward toward the victims of this unusual “Super Storm.” But just how unusual was it? Sandy’s devastation gives us the opportunity to remember another giant storm that barreled […]
Posted inGoat
Money and climate
Ah, money. During one of the biggest shopping times of the year, after spending Thanksgiving morning rolling stacks of coins with the kids, my thoughts turn to it, naturally. Or maybe unnaturally; what was mostly on my mind was the high cost of doing something to slow climate change. Specifically, I was thinking about carbon […]
Posted inRange
Turning climate change talk to action
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House I have a file on my desktop called “Cool Ideas.” It’s filled with news items on practical steps Westerners are taking to address climate change. I collected them over this election year while the issue drew platitudes and punch-lines from the candidates but little meaningful discussion on the national […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
What scientists are learning from wildfire in New Mexico
New Mexico’s Gila National Forest is an ideal place to study wildfire scars. Ponderosa pines on the western cliffs have blackened bark at their bases. On the eastern range, frequent burns keep the grass treeless and nutrient-enriched, so that it stretches for miles like a thick green hide. From a small plane in July, I […]
Posted inGoat
From coal mine to clean energy
At first glance, the man greeting visitors last Friday at the start of the gravel road leading to Elk Creek mine, a coal mine in Colorado’s North Fork Valley, might have been mistaken for a miner. His bright orange vest and black hardhat looked the part. But both items lacked the black dust that settles […]
Posted inGoat
Fecal matters
The Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY is one of the nation’s most polluted waterways. Toxic sludge lines the bottom of the canal, designated a Superfund site, and used condoms, human feces and tampons bob on the surface. Every time it rains, wastewater treatments plants inundated with storm water flush sewage and run-off into the Gowanus […]