Energy & Industry

When I read Tasha Eichenseher’s recent Land Letter article (sub reqd) about fracking’s use of water, I was alarmed by the numbers. In Colorado, alone, hydraulic fracturing operations use about 4.5 billion gallons of water per year. That’s expected to increase to more than 6 billion gallons over the next few years. The takeaway is […]

In agricultural technology circles, when talk turns to plant breeding as a way to boost crop yields, combat plant diseases, and adapt to a hotter, drier world, genetic modification has frequently dominated the conversation. This includes the Roundup-ready suite of crops, resistant to herbicides, or BT corn and soy, which are modified to manufacture their […]

Since 2005, the nation’s honeybees have been on a fast track to oblivion. Thousands of once-thriving, humming hives of pollinators have become empty husks, their inhabitants vanished. Scientists have been racing to pin down the culprits behind what’s known as Colony Collapse Disorder. So far, they’ve implicated a parasitic mite, an immune deficiency disorder, and […]

The opening act of yesterday’s hearing led by the House subcommittee on Energy and the Environment was uncommonly action-packed: Josh Fox, documentary filmmaker and director of “Gasland,” was lead from the room in handcuffs, on the grounds he did not have the right credentials. Earlier, a camera crew claiming to be from ABC news was […]

Let’s say you don’t want an oil and gas drill operating 250 feet away from your kitchen window. The 1000-megawatt lights keep your Yorkie in an extraordinary state of duress, and your kids won’t stay off the dang fence. What can you do? El Paso and Arapaho counties, on the Front Range of Colorado, have […]

Pity the antitrust regulator. As the Obama administration pacifies its way toward the 2012 elections, those bureaucrats charged with protecting small businessmen from monopolies are dropping like flies. Take J. Dudley Butler, the head of the soporific-sounding Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration. Butler, a lawyer who built a career fighting powerful, giant poultry companies […]

(updated 1/30/2011) I recently read that the energy industry hates fracking. Of course, they actually love fracking — as in hydraulic fracturing to crack rock and release all those juicy hydrocarbons. What they hate is the word itself: “fracking.” I hate it, too, though I suspect for very different reasons. Energy flacks abhor “fracking,” according […]

A few headlines last week celebrated the news that in the U.S. renewable energy production now surpasses nuclear energy production. The increase, however, is hardly coming from the solar panels adorning your roof. Conventional hydroelectric power still makes up the majority of renewable energy, as it has for decades. And, according to the National Hydropower […]