Should large quantities of manure from giant commercial farms be considered hazardous waste? They’re not right now, and at least 14 members of Congress want to keep it that way. The group, which includes Idaho Representative Mike Simpson (R), recently signed on to the Superfund Common Sense Act, a bill that would prevent the Environmental […]
Climate change
Posted inRange
Feeling the wasteful weight of the electronics age
A university campus like the one where I work is a fine place to receive constant reminders of one’s age. For years, decades really, I paid no heed to older colleagues who complained that they had little in common with their undergraduate students. Now, however, I fully recognize that although I diligently work at keeping […]
Posted inGoat
A small victory for Libby
Rarely has good news emerged from Libby, Mont., in recent decades. Hundreds of residents of the small town have died and thousands more have been sickened from exposure to asbestos fibers, which spread from a local vermiculite mine throughout the community, ending up lodged in people’s lungs. Kids used to play in mine waste, and […]
Posted inGoat
The costs of climate change
From California beachside communities to remote villages in subarctic Alaska, the impacts of climate change are becoming ever more tangible, as shown by two government studies released this week. “Sea-level rise is here and we need to start planning for it,” said Philip King, associate professor of economics at San Francisco State University, in the […]
Posted inRange
Mega myths of the Keystone XL pipeline
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Among hundreds of protestors who spent three days in jail in Washington D.C. for publicly opposing the Keystone XL pipeline, a 1,700-mile-long conduit planned to carry crude oil from Canada’s tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries, was Bill McKibben, author and founder of 350.org. When he was released from the […]
Posted inRange
This is your brain on climate change
By Anne Fahey, Sightline.org Remember those old anti-drug television commercials with an egg sizzling in a frying pan? Here’s a new twist: This is your brain. This is your brain on climate change. I’ve written before that with or without multimillion dollar campaigns to discredit climate science (and scientists), our brains don’t seem very well equipped to fathom the scope […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2011: For the love of hummers
EPA aims to clean up polluted air in Western gas fields
In gas patches East to West, tales of tainted water wells have garnered widespread media attention, putting hydraulic fracturing — broadly credited for the natural gas industry’s meteoric expansion of late — at the center of one of the country’s hottest environmental fights. But despite reams of circumstantial evidence, incontrovertible proof that fracking itself — […]
Posted inBlog
Extreme weather makes us pay attention to climate
This seems to be one of those times of the year when the weather forces us to pay it some special attention. It’s hurricane season, for one, and as I wrote this Irene was threatening the Caribbean and the U.S. mid-Atlantic region. Here in the low desert of Arizona we’re enduring what is likely to […]
Posted inRange
Why Washington’s only coal-fired power plant is having a bad year
By Clark Williams Derry, Sightline.org While I was looking for some other information, I ran across the most recent coal consumption stats from the US Energy Information Administration. And from all indications it’s been a very strange, very bad year for the Transalta coal-fired power plant in Centralia, WA. Take a look: The bars represent consumption […]
Posted inWotr
Great hope, great fear
Last month, three little girls, ages 8, 5 and 2, and their mother, were killed in a Wyoming flash flood that washed away their van. It was the kind of torrential downpour climatologists predict will increase as the planet warms. Their father survived. He alone can speak of the horror of trying to save his […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2011: Looking for Balance in Navajoland
A bad bargain
Your article “Fumigant fight” points out that, “without an effective replacement (for methyl bromide), growers could face lower yields, costing an estimated $100 million per year” (HCN, 7/25/11). However, the purchase and application of methyl iodide is not free. Farmers are interested in net profitability, not merely revenues. Perhaps, the real negative impact on pre-tax […]
Posted inGoat
Haze be gone
When I started researching regional haze rules a few months back, a source warned me that I was wading into the Clean Air Act’s wonkiest, most technically complicated depths. I remember her asking me something like: “Are you sure you want to go there?” Which is to say, you’d be forgiven if you paid little […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Yellowstone leak highlights a different kind of oil spill
As modern rivers go, the Yellowstone is relatively unadulterated. It’s the longest dam-free river in the U.S., rushing 692 miles from its headwaters in Wyoming’s Absaroka Mountains through Yellowstone National Park and Montana’s Paradise Valley and eastern plains, to its confluence with the Missouri. Cutthroat trout, vanished from much of their native range, still hold […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
‘Grab the bucks, gimme the jobs’
Forgive me if I am wrong in thinking it incongruous that pretty much the same people who are very cranked up about leaving our children and grandchildren with trillions of dollars in debt don’t seem to care about leaving them with environmental catastrophes related to fracking and other shortsighted “grab the bucks now, give me […]
Posted inRange
How troubling is ocean acidification?
By Jennifer Langston, Sightline.org This post is part of the research project: Northwest Ocean Acidification Not every commercial fisherman is convinced that curbing carbon emissions is necessary to stop global warming. But the evidence that fossil fuel pollution is making the oceans more corrosive—and removing building basic building blocks of the marine world—starts to get […]
Posted inWotr
Ice matters
“Now I know a glacier,” said Leon, a playwright from New York. We sat across from each other in front of a small driftwood fire, the cool Alaskan evening wrapping us in darkness. Leon had just spent five days with me as an artist-in-residence in the wilderness area where I work. Each day, our near […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
The fight over a much-needed pesticide: methyl iodide
In May, on a farm outside of Sanger, Calif., a man in a white hazmat suit and a gas mask drove a hulking tractor over bare ground, injecting toxic gas 12 inches deep in the soil. Behind the machine, plastic tarps unrolled like Saran Wrap over the land to contain the chemical. In the next […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Where’s the science?
High Country News has a well-deserved reputation for reporting that explores the complexities and subtleties of environmental issues. “Wolf whiplash” was a jarring contrast that blamed repeated legal action by environmental groups for recent legislation that removed wolves in five states from the endangered species list (HCN, 5/30/11). As the story suggests, this legislation opens […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Fancy a drink?
Thank you for publishing Abrahm Lustgarten’s important article about Louis Meeks and his damaged water well (HCN, 6/27/11). Mr. Meeks is clearly a hero in the 21st century American West. EnCana Corporation once prided itself on utilizing “best practices” in the production of gas wells. So I was encouraged when EnCana spokesman Randy Teeuwen spoke […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Living in a world of hurt
I’ve been aware of fracking for many years (HCN, 6/27/11). But until the relatively recent controversy over its effect on well water in Pavillion, Wyo., I was less informed than I should have been. Development of any energy source has consequences. Rampant development of fossil fuels puts regulators way behind in preventing environmental catastrophes, and […]