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 […]
Climate change
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 […]
Posted inWotr
Rancher says coal ash regulation is overdue
In Montana, clean water is the lifeblood of any successful ranch. I know this, because I am a fourth-generation rancher in southeastern Montana. My great-grandfather, a Scottish immigrant, settled along the banks of Rosebud Creek in the 1880s because of its abundance of clean water, both aboveground and below it. I’m sure he never dreamed that, 100 years later, pollution from […]
Posted inGoat
It’s not the two-headed fish
I’m as guilty as the next headline writer. When High Country Newsran a story about selenium pollution in May, I went with the two-headed fish. After all, a headline promising a grotesque tale of a deformed fish was one of our few opportunities to even approach the clickability of adorable miniature pig videos and celebrity sideboob […]
Posted inGoat
Old and foul-mouthed
I’ve done a few stories on air pollution in the last year, and many a source has told me this: When it comes to pollution, all fossil fuel power plants are not created equal. It’s a principle enshrined in the Clean Air Act. Power plants that began generating electricity before 1978 are grandfathered into the […]
Posted inGoat
Capturing our way out of the carbon mess
Ah, geoengineering. That crazy idea to manipulate earth’s atmosphere to do the opposite of what our current manipulations are doing — cool the planet instead of warm it — has made its way back into the headlines recently, with pieces in the New Yorker and Scientific American. Geoengineering would be a desperate measure indeed, stemming […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Sorry, Utah
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a podcast! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. […]
Posted inArticles
Rantcast: Sorry, Utah
Rants from the Hill are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in rural Nevada. They are posted at the beginning of each month at www.hcn.org. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, or through Feedburner if you use other podcast readers. If you like this podcast, you might also enjoy West of 100, our […]
Posted inWotr
What should we do with our blink of time?
The long view of science turns out to be both reassuring and daunting. Life on Earth turns out to be remarkably resilient. Within the story of our 13.5-billion-year old universe, our own lives — so crucial to us and to our families and dear friends — look fleeting, gossamer. These paradoxes overwhelm me. For five years, […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Coping with two-headed fish and other effects of selenium
Muddy Creek is nondescript, a narrow stream trickling through the sagebrush steppe of southern Wyoming. But like many Western waterways, it carries selenium, a natural poison that seeps from rocks and dirt and accumulates in the food chain much as mercury does. Both humans and animals need tiny amounts for good health, but too much […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Something in the desert water?
While Arizona’s homegrown political traditions tend more toward a conservative Blue Dog Democrat, moderate stance, there has, since Goldwater, arisen in Phoenix and the Valley a somewhat hard-core Republican population of voters (HCN, 4/30/12, “Money talks — and votes”). For some reason, when voters retire and move to Phoenix or Scottsdale from the East Coast, […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Selenium concentrations
Selenium concentrations, in milligrams per kilogram, detected in stream bed sediment samples collected from Muddy Creek and tributaries in Carbon County, Wyoming.
Posted inWotr
Rachel Carson’s redwood dreams, and 50 years of “Silent Spring”
As a child of the 1950s, I remember hot summer nights that were only relieved when a truck came by spraying a cool mist that would kill mosquitoes. We kids ran after that mist like it was the ice cream truck. Several years later, with the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962, parents […]