I earn my living protecting undeveloped natural ecosystems and restoring degraded landscapes, and I visit Western deserts as frequently as I can. So I sympathize with the residents and stewards of the Mojave Desert confronted by the reality of industrial energy development profiled in Judith Lewis Mernit’s “Sacrificial Land” (HCN, 4/15/13). However, these people’s complaints, […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
California cap and trade’s dirty secret
It is too bad that this otherwise insightful article overlooked a key flaw and dirty secret embodied in the California Air Resources Board’s cap-and-trade law (“A better cap-and-trade?” HCN, 4/15/13). As part of the carbon-trading scheme the ARB launched, the board adopted forest carbon protocols that allow timber companies in California and elsewhere to market […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
How technology detected a huge mine landslide before it happened
A 165-million-ton landslide rocked Kennecott Utah Copper’s Bingham Canyon Mine on April 10, registering as a 2.4-magnitude earthquake in nearby Salt Lake City. The cascade of rock damaged giant trucks and digger machines, but not one of the 500 people who work the 2.75-mile-wide, 0.75-mile-deep pit was injured. That’s because Kennecott employees expected a slide […]
Posted inGoat
Colorado likely to adopt tough new rural renewable energy requirements
Updated 5/16/13 This is “a direct assault on rural Colorado,” Rep. Brian DelGrosso, R-Loveland, fumed at Colorado’s Democratic lawmakers last week. From the strength of his rhetoric, you might think wealthy Front Range cities had proposed phasing out production agriculture or even banning all guns. In reality, though, DelGrosso was piling scorn on a policy […]
Posted inGoat
Navajos double-down on coal
Coal is always a hot topic on the Colorado Plateau, home to many of the mines and power plants that feed electricity-hungry Southwestern cities hundreds of miles away. But in the past few weeks, black gold has been in the news even more than normal as the Navajo Nation has weighed a new lease for […]
Posted inGoat
Arizona’s impending solar war
There may be no better place on the planet to generate solar electricity than Arizona. The entire state shows up as a big red stain on those solar radiation maps, and there are plenty of places to put solar panels, from fallow alfalfa fields to parking lots and canals, where photovoltaic arrays can generate power […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
The Forest Service battles placer mining with an obscure law
On a clear day last October in northern Idaho, Forest Service geologist Clint Hughes panned for gold on the North Fork Clearwater River. The area attracted gold prospectors in the 1860s, but these days, the river, which flows through a wild stretch of country near the Montana border, is popular with campers and anglers. Hughes […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Contemplating the future
In the last few months, I think that you have increased the quality and timeliness of your articles. This latest cover story is proof in the pudding (“Sacrificial Land,” HCN, 4/15/13). Not only did Judith Lewis Mernit cover what is going on in the Mojave Desert — a complicated subject — but she also included […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Necessary evil: a review of Boom, Bust, Boom
Boom, Bust, Boom: A Story About Copper, The Metal That Runs The WorldBill Carter274 pages, hardcover: $26.Scribner, 2012. Arizona is known for the five C’s — cattle, cotton, climate, citrus and the king of them all, copper. Bill Carter’s book Boom, Bust, Boom: A Story About Copper, the Metal that Runs the World is more […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
The latest: Mixed messages about nuclear power safety
BackstoryIn January 2012, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in Orange County, Calif., started leaking radioactive water and was shut down. When Southern California Edison announced that the plant could be back online within six months, then-chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Gregory Jaczko publicly chastised the company. Jaczko, who helped kill plans to store […]
Posted inGoat
Could California lead the West on regulating fracking?
Until relatively recently, California didn’t often come up in discussions about booming oil and gas development. Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado have been much more at the forefront of the media fray, joined by New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Dakota in the last decade. But ever since a pair of unsuccessful gold prospectors first […]
Posted inGoat
Climate change, not terrorists, is the real threat to the power grid
Early in the morning on April 16, someone fired shots at a Pacific Gas & Electric substation near San Jose, Calif. A transformer bank was the primary victim, and it ended up losing thousands of gallons of oil. The secondary victim was the electrical grid: The power company urged residents to cut back on their […]
Posted inApril 15, 2013: Sacrificial Land
Aspen, Colo. environmental community split over small hydro
Last summer’s Fourth of July parade in the resort town of Aspen, Colo., was apple-pie middle America. There were Rotarians and librarians, prancing horses and dirt bikers. The mayor passed out flags. Cheers erupted as veterans passed, their signs like bookmarks in American history from World War II to Afghanistan. Then came some unusual floats: […]
Posted inGoat
High-tech canary in the copper mine
On the night of April 10, 165 million tons of rock — equivalent in volume to 735,000 school buses — ripped down the northeast face of Kennecott Utah Copper’s Bingham Canyon mine near Salt Lake City, damaging giant shoveling machines, haul trucks and other mining equipment. The cascade of earth swept away roads and left […]
Posted inApril 15, 2013: Sacrificial Land
Sacrificial Land: Will renewable energy devour the Mojave Desert?
Over breakfast at the Crowbar Café in Shoshone, Calif., Brian Brown explains to me how he makes a living. Shoshone is a town of 31 in the Mojave Desert near the Nevada border; Brown runs his own business here, the China Ranch Date Farm. In the late summer, he strips offshoots from unproductive palm trees […]
Posted inArticles
Federal Helium Reserve faces uncertainty amid global shortage
While browsing the Bureau of Land Management’s website, I found an odd piece of trivia. True or False: Inhaling helium causes your vocal cords to constrict, raising the pitch of your voice. I was surprised. What was the agency in charge of overseeing the dry husks of the West’s open spaces doing with a colorless, […]
Posted inGoat
Is coal making a comeback?
Last September, Citigroup quietly released a report declaring that cheap natural gas was engaged in a “symbiotic relationship” with intermittent renewable forms of energy — i.e. solar and wind — and that together the two would displace enough coal to take a big bite out of carbon emissions. Over the past month, the report has […]
Posted inGoat
Does oil and gas drilling cause earthquakes?
Just before 11 p.m. on November 5, 2011, the biggest earthquake in Oklahoma’s history hit the small town of Prague. It buckled a highway, exploded windows, collapsed homes and left terrified residents clutching their beds as they waited for the shaking to stop. Ripples from the 5.7 magnitude quake were felt as far as 800 […]
Posted inWotr
Smug alert
Perhaps drilling rigs should be allowed in cities, towns and even into our own metaphorical backyards. It would be good for the environment. Maybe not your personal environment, but more broadly for our environment. Community planners for decades have urged mixed-use development, in which we combine work, play and shopping in closer physical proximity. Lately, we’ve […]