Next month, California will hold the first auction as part of its carbon cap and trade program. The program, which will be the second largest CO2 emissions trading system in the world, has been in the works since 2006, when the Golden State passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, a piece of legislation that mandated […]
Climate change
Posted inGoat
Some (diseases) like it hot
All sorts of things have been linked to climate change lately: skin cancer, shrinking leaves, extreme weather and death. This summer, scientists and reporters have been puzzling over a wave of disease outbreaks—hantavirus,valley fever and West Nile virus—and whether they, too, are linked to climate change. With some of these diseases the climatic connections are […]
Posted inWotr
Our survival depends on fighting climate change
I am 88 and have seen a lot of change over the decades, but I do not think anyone living now has ever faced a more serious threat to life than the threat of global climate change. As President Obama said recently, “More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They’re a threat […]
Posted inGoat
The sound of pollution
Artists like British “grime writer” Moose, who scrubs designs into filthy, smog-charred city surfaces (including the Broadway tunnel in San Francisco), have found novel ways to visualize air pollution for passersby. But now it’s also possible to experience air pollution with a different sense: hearing. Using mass spectrometry, which helps scientists pinpoint the exact compounds […]
Posted inWotr
Pondering change in the Great Basin
I’m standing on the shores of Summer Lake, or, to be more accurate, what used to be a lakeshore but is now a dry lakebed in Oregon’s high desert. I’m here with a group of writers, scientists and artists, all of us gathered to talk about changes in the northern Great Basin. Sharp environmental contrasts, […]
Posted inWotr
Don’t look for the frontier in Alaska
Alaska. The word tumbles out like a wild stream, carrying a cascade of images: grizzly bears, glaciers, vast mountains, Native villages. It’s the Alaska we believe in, an American Eden for lovers of wilderness. But as change sweeps the state, the veneer is cracking. In the southeastern panhandle, the famed Inside Passage bordering British Columbia, […]
Posted inGoat
Is Lake Powell really shrinking?
The West is heating and drying up so much that the whole place could burst into flames at any second. At least, that’s the way it seems, reading the news these days. Every day it’s another item about the catastrophic, unprecedented drought and the “new normal” of months of consecutive 90+ degree highs in places […]
Posted inRange
Reviewing how native peoples will deal with climate change
Editors Note: This piece is cross posted from Mother Earth Journal, where reporter Terri Hansen writes about indigenous people and the environment. Extreme weather events forced an awareness of urgent climate disruptions this year, with July 2012 being the hottest month on record – hotter even than the Dust Bowl’s July 1936.The science tells us climate changes would […]
Posted inGoat
Dam that methane
Updated 8/13/2012 10 a.m. Last summer, visitors to Lacamas Lake, a reservoir outside the town of Vancouver, Wash., may have seen some strange devices floating on the reservoir’s surface. “It look(ed) like an alien lander,” says Washington State University doctoral student Bridgit Deemer. The mysterious objects were traps designed to catch air bubbles spurting up from the […]
Posted inGoat
Global warming, local politics
“I was a victim of the snow,” former Chicago mayor Michael Bilandic told Chicago Magazine in 2000, referring to his failed 1979 reelection bid. Bilandic replaced the first Mayor Daley, who died in 1976, in the midst of his sixth term, and he was expected to glide back into office. He was the Democratic “machine’s” chosen one post-Daley, […]
Posted inGoat
Are big, severe wildfires normal?
The conventional wildfire wisdom goes something like this: Western forests are out of whack due to past fire suppression and logging practices. Forests that used to be open and free of undergrowth have turned into dense “dog hair” thickets of young trees that burn like kindling. Combine that with millions of acres of trees killed […]
Posted inWotr
Megadrought, the new normal
In a dirt parking lot near Many Farms, Ariz., a Navajo farmer sold me a mutton burrito. He hasn’t used his tractor in two years, he told me; he has to cook instead of farm because “there isn’t any water.” He pointed east at the Chuska Mountains, which straddle the New Mexico border. In a […]
Posted inWotr
Global climate change: We need to talk about it
“Knee-high by the Fourth of July” is the old saw about the height of corn in the rural irrigated parts of Colorado where it’s grown. But this year, hurried on by the hot weather, the stalks stood waist-high to my 6-foot-2 frame by the summer solstice –– nearly two weeks before the Fourth arrived. We […]
Posted inGoat
New podcast: The ski industry and climate change
The latest episode of our monthly podcast, West of 100, is ready for listening! It accompanies Greg Hanscom’s recent cover story about Black Diamond CEO Peter Metcalf, and his crusade to turn the outdoor gear industry into a force for nature. As Greg reports, it’s been a process characterized by fits and starts, and the […]
Posted inGoat
Republican hypocrisy on gun control … and other musings
You didn’t ask, but if you had, I would’ve told you: … The head of ExxonMobil should step down or be fired, because he’s revealed himself to be a caveman ill-equipped to lead the biggest U.S. oil company in the 21st century. All we need to do is “spend more policy effort on adaptation … […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
The ski industry, climate hawk?
Aspen Skiing Company Sustainability VP Auden Schendler, and professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones on why ski corporations and pro athletes should step up to the climate crisis — and how they can do it. Tune in to West of 100 around the middle of each month. Available via our RSS feed, or subscribe for free through iTunes. Music: “CGI Snake” […]
Posted inGoat
On droughts and fires past
At first glance, nothing about the photo seems awry. It shows a truck spraying water on the dirt streets of Silverton, Colo., elevation 9,318 feet, to keep the dust down, a regular occurrence in May or June. This photograph, however, was taken on New Year’s Day. In the background, mountain slopes that regularly see some […]
Posted inGoat
Dear monsoon, please materialize
Explaining what’s driving the big, scary fires consuming Colorado to the L.A. Times, Forest Service ecologist Bob Keane didn’t mince words: “The reason Colorado is burning is they’ve had prolonged drought.” That drought can prime forests for fire is well established, and, well, kind of obvious. Parched plants and trees are easier to ignite than […]
Posted inWotr
Notes from a wildfire refugee
The sheriff’s call came at 3:30 a.m.: Leave immediately. Luckily, my wife, SueEllen, and I were already up, grabbing passports, photos, dog food, wall hangings from Thailand and Zanzibar. A neighbor had called earlier, warning us that flames were coming fast out of the western foothills, driven by searing winds that transformed our backyard windmill […]
Posted inRange
Putting the West on a low-carb(on) diet
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House The day after the University of Colorado Law School’s annual summer conference — “A Low Carbon Energy Blueprint for the American West” — had ended, I was walking in downtown Fort Collins, when something above the foothills caught my eye. The dense white puff looked like a blooming […]