In yet another goodwill gesture to the energy industry, the feds are proposing to loosen air quality restrictions in some national parks and wilderness areas. The EPA’s new rule would change the way in which emissions are reported, allowing power plants to substitute an annual average in place of averages for shorter periods, such as […]
Climate change
Posted inJune 23, 2008: Peace on the Klamath
Shifting sands in Navajoland
TEESTO, ARIZONA In the dry heart of the Navajo Reservation, at the end of a solitary, sand-choked dirt road, geologist Margaret Hiza Redsteer climbs out of her dark blue government Jeep, taps lightly on a door, and waits. And waits. When Mary Biggambler finally pokes her head around the door, it’s with a hearty […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Climate cash-in
Western farmers and ranchers use crops – and cows – to tap into the carbon market
Posted inMay 12, 2008: Boom! Boom!
The West’s wacky weather
In December of last year, High Country News ran a news report about the severe drought then plaguing the West. Ski slopes were brown, wildfires were still burning in California and New Mexico, and weather forecasters were calling for an ultra-dry Western winter. By the time the issue hit the streets, those streets and everything […]
Posted inMay 12, 2008: Boom! Boom!
Climate Revolutionary
Creating a legal framework for saving our planet
Posted inMay 12, 2008: Boom! Boom!
The mysticism of mud
Mud season just ended on the sage-covered mesa north of Taos that I call home. During the last few months, you could tell who lives on dirt roads by the perpetual stripe of mud on their lower pant legs. That’s normal. But I have never seen as much mud as I saw this spring. On […]
Posted inArticles
Up in FLAME
Last year, over 6 million acres of wildlands burned in Western states. Since 2000, wildfires have burned larger and hotter than ever, thanks to drought and a century of fire suppression. And they’ve caused millions of dollars in damage as more people build homes in or near wildlands. That’s left officials trying to figure out […]
Posted inApril 14, 2008: Taking to the Trees
A hard winter makes you think
After more than a decade of mild winters, we residents of this high-altitude town in southern Colorado finally got a dose of the genuine article. Not since “Remember December,” when it snowed every day in December 1983, had anyone seen this much snow. But stories told by old-timers, those former miners who stayed on here […]
Posted inWotr
A hard winter makes you think
After more than a decade of mild winters, we residents of this high-altitude town in southern Colorado got a dose of the genuine article. Not since “Remember December,” when it snowed every day in December 1983, had anyone seen this much snow. But stories from old-timers, those remnant miners who stayed on here long after […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2008: Seeking the Water Jackpot
Two weeks in the West
Tired of smog-ridden suburban sprawl and strip malls? Perhaps it’s time to escape to one of the West’s national forests, parks or other sundry public lands for a deep, calming breath of fresh air. But even that Western staple is becoming as hard to find as affordable real estate in a ski town. The federal […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
Unnatural Preservation
In the age of global warming, public-land managers face a stark choice: They can let national parks and other wildlands lose their most cherished wildlife. Or they can become gardeners and zookeepers.
Posted inWotr
You can’t stop nature
Why does it have to be so complicated? All we ask of nature is to be able to do what we want to do; no more, no less. We like to think of our impact on the world as controlled and businesslike, with only one variable changing at a time. But no matter how hard […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2007: Rebels with a Lost Cause
Toxic legacy
A Cold War-era landfill may threaten Albuquerque’s aquifer
Posted inNovember 26, 2007: Beetle Warfare
Coal’s other mess
As the air around power plants clears, another problem worsens
Posted inWotr
Western water is petering out
Gerald Spangler needs no statistics or charts to tell him what he already knows: We are running out of water. Spangler is a semi-retired farmer who has lived in southwest Nebraska, 15 miles east of the Colorado border, since the Dust Bowl days. In 1 979, he drilled his first groundwater well to a depth […]
Posted inWotr
The inevitable fires next time
Welcome to the West’s new world of fire. With six out of the last eight years among the worst 10 fire seasons since 1960, it is a world where every year is what we call a “bad” fire season. Or maybe it’s the “indefinitely bad” season, as Tom Boatner, the BLM’s chief of fire operations […]
Posted inWotr
When smoke gets in your life
On the way to Gardiner, Mont., the sunrise was a surreal red. All day, smoke squatted in town. Walking around on the eve of my writing class, seeing people through the haze, felt vaguely apocalyptic; what I imagined nuclear fallout might be like, or Pompeii after the eruption of Vesuvius. Ash landed on parked cars […]
Posted inWotr
A Wyoming forest yearns to burn
Gorgeous red sunsets and haze in the air scare the heck out of people in my part of Wyoming. We live next to the Shoshone National Forest. It is a jewel, and so remarkable that it was the first national forest created by Congress. The mountains in this 2.4 million-acre reserve in west-central Wyoming are […]