Energy & Industry

I’m kind of a map geek. I hang them in the bathroom and study the names of small Colorado towns while brushing my teeth. Meals frequently turn into geography bees thanks to the world map tacked above the table (quick—name three countries that border Afghanistan). But how do you map something that’s basically invisible? That’s […]

I’ve been immersed in reams of reports and data regarding the electrical grid for months (read the results!), and let me tell you this: The grid is big, it’s important, it creeps into every aspect of our modern lives, and it’s fragile. If your science fiction story is in need of a modern-Frankenstein-like human-made monster […]

Each year, nearly half the world’s wild sockeye salmon congregate in southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay, then make their way up rivers into a wild land tangled with smaller streams to spawn. There, at the headwaters of the Nushagak and Kvichak rivers, Pebble Partnership proposes to mine copper and gold. The Pebble Mine, if fully developed, […]

When I first wrote about the Bureau of Land Management’s draft of its new fracking regulations in May 2012, I chalked the Obama administration’s pro-industry, jobs-jobs-jobs spin on the proposal up to election-year politicking. After all, beneath the Orwellian PR and despite not going as far as environmentalists had hoped, many parts of it seemed […]

Can grazing help control cheatgrass? That’s one of those questions that in some places doesn’t mean a thing, but in the Great Basin is likely to elicit a range of answers, from a decisive ‘yes’ to a forceful ‘absolutely not.’ The answer, as usual, lies somewhere in between: It depends on how dominant cheatgrass already […]

For over a century, monopoly electric utilities have nurtured the West. They fed the mines and the mills, and now deliver the juice to our thirsty digital devices and air conditioners. Now, it appears as if the offspring is offing its mother, as rooftop solar slowly strangles utilities. While the green media has gleefully spread […]

This month, Wyoming coal companies will pull the 10 billionth ton of coal from the state’s ground, according to a recent estimate by the Wyoming State Geological Survey. If all that ancient metamorphosed swamp were put in a 100-foot high pile, it would stretch across a 12-by-12-mile square of prairie. WSGS based the 10-billion ton […]

As genetically-modified food crops speed inexorably across the land, the U.S. government is doing little more than occasionally tapping the brakes a bit. The Department of Agriculture gave one such tap last week, reported The New York Times, when it decided to delay the release of two engineered crops that could result in much higher […]