I’ve been puzzled by people I know to be intelligent who nonetheless find it inconceivable that the earth’s climate could be affected by human activity. Then I saw one of those “cavedude” commercials on television, and a glimmer of insight began to flicker. In the commercial, a Neandertal in modern dress is talking to a […]
Climate change
Posted inWotr
The clock is ticking
Last month, we both received the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Protection Award. The EPA awards are meant to encourage individuals and institutions leading in the fight against global warming, which has emerged as the greatest threat to planetary security that we face. Selected by an international panel of judges, our fellow awardees included the Rev. […]
Posted inWotr
Global climate change? Let’s go shopping
Out of nowhere, it almost seems, everyone is talking about global warming. Presidential candidates, corporate moguls, media pundits — the news is saturated with the latest climate-change buzzwords. My current favorite is “carbon footprint,” which made me wonder what I’d stepped in….what we’ve all stepped in. It’s a lot messier and more insidious than you […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
The challenge of climate-change denial
Reading the newspapers lately, you might get the impression that the once-strident climate-change deniers, doubters and skeptics are slowly becoming extinct. The New York Times recently called Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the most strident of Al Gore’s critics, “a dinosaur,” and few in the House or Senate even tried to counter Gore’s recent testimony on […]
Posted inWotr
Why are there still climate-change deniers?
Reading the newspapers lately, you might get the impression that the once strident climate-change deniers, doubters and skeptics are slowly becoming extinct. The New York Times recently called Sen. James Inhofe, the most strident of Al Gore’s critics, “a dinosaur,” and few in the House or Senate even tried to counter Gore’s recent testimony on […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Market cooling
Will California and the West knock down global warming by buying and selling carbon?
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Two weeks in the West
“We’re not out to destroy the universe. We’re here to make money. And if we can do that with minimal impact, that’s my job.” —New Mexico State Land Office Archaeologist David Eck on a proposal to drill for natural gas just outside Chaco Culture National Historic Park. Down in the Sonoran Desert, the blue-flowered lupines […]
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Why would a federal agency trash itslibraries?
It takes a special talent to make the topic of library management controversial, but the Environmental Protection Agency seems to have a real knack for self-inflicted wounds. EPA gave itself a black eye and enraged librarians throughout the country last year, when, without public notice or congressional consultation, it began the process of dismantling its […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Excremental gains?
A stink over ‘sludge’ raises larger questions
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
Trees — A different shade of green
Cities look to urban forests as a natural utility
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
A whole lot of shaking
Simon Winchester’s latest book, A Crack in the Edge of the World, takes a comprehensive look at the country’s worst earthquake: San Francisco, 1906. The quake, he writes, “came thundering in on what looked like huge undulating waves … the whole street and all its great buildings rose and fell, rose and fell, on what […]
Posted inWotr
Fire and the warming West
An Associated Press story that ran recently above the page one fold in Billings and Butte, Mont., didn’t qualify even as a brief in Baltimore, Md. No surprise, there. More people live in public housing in Baltimore than populate the states of North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming, combined. But it was big news on the […]
Posted inWotr
California steps up to lead the nation
Despite vociferous opposition from the California Chamber of Commerce, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R, and Democrat state legislators cemented a deal on Aug. 30 to pass the much-heralded Global Warming Solutions Act. California is the world’s twelfth-largest producer of global-warming causing greenhouse gases, and the bill commits the state to cutting its greenhouse-gas emissions 25 percent […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Reborn
The West casts a wary eye on the latest nuclear craze
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Where there’s fire, there’s global warming
“I think there was a tendency to think that the overwhelming factor (driving forest fires) was short-term weather. There’s this idea that drought matters, and it does. But it’s taking time and a lot of research to show that climate plays a big role as well.” — Anthony Westerling Six years ago, climate scientist Anthony […]
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The good news about garbage
One summer day, in my favorite wild place, I found enlightenment through garbage. Other people’s garbage, I realized, is my destiny — and maybe my redemption. Spiritual enlightenment found in a wilderness is a cliche; few special moments occur anywhere else these days, and just once, can’t someone admit to finding rapture in a mall? […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
The wild, wild weather
Blame it on climate change or the vagaries of nature, but whatever the cause, weather in the West has been extreme — and wacky. The Southwest has become a tinderbox, while Northwesterners are sopping wet. WASHINGTON Average yearly moisture: 37.02 in.* Moisture June ‘05-May ‘06: 41.53 in. Nine consecutive days of downpour hit western Washington […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
Climate-change clues — in tropical glaciers
To understand why nearly every climate expert on the planet believes our hundred-year binge on fossil fuels has set the stage for today’s wrenching weather disruptions, you have to take the long view, looking beyond a single hurricane or heat wave. If you do that, the news gets worse. And if you really wish to […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
The hazy days of summer … and winter, spring and fall
Air pollution settles over the West’s national parks
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
The Tamarisk Hunter
In the desert Southwest of 2030 Big Daddy Drought runs the show, California claims all the water, and a water tick named Lolo ekes out a rugged living removing tamarisk.