On election night this November in Boulder, Colo., under the stained-glass ceiling of the Hotel Boulderado, about 100 progressive-leaning voters crowded around a screen showing preliminary results. Early in the evening, the odds of the city breaking its ties with Minnesota-based corporate utility Xcel Energy to pursue locally produced, clean power seemed as dark as […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inGoat
The circular logic of energy independence
“From its beginning 200 years ago, throughout its history, America has made great sacrifices of blood and also of treasure to achieve and maintain its independence. In the last third of this century, our independence will depend on maintaining and achieving self-sufficiency in energy.” President Richard Nixon said this back in 1973, after oil producers […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Cream of the crop
“Milk and Water Don’t Mix,” was wonderfully interesting (HCN, 11/28/11). I was especially impressed when writer Stephanie Paige Ogburn mentioned the origin of feedlot dairying by Dutch immigrants in southern L.A. County, its subsequent shift to Chino in San Bernardino County, and more recently to the Bakersfield area. I didn’t think many people who didn’t […]
Posted inRange
Holiday cheer for colleges leading the way
Now that all the papers are graded and final grades submitted, I’m feeling a bit of holiday cheer for my employer, Arizona State University, and I’m inclined to give them a shout-out for a cool thing they’re doing. They don’t, of course, really need my help; there’s a large and well-staffed publicity office that is […]
Posted inRange
Who really imports U.S. coal, and other facts about coal exports
By Eric de Place, Sightline.org This post is part of the research project: Northwest Coal Exports Arguments over Northwest coal exports have been hot and heavy in 2011. As one might expect, there’s been plenty of disagreement about values, but there’s also been quite a bit of disagreement over facts. After nearly a year of wrangling, here’s […]
Posted inWotr
Tips for a bright – and efficient – Christmas
Last year, I loaded up the Christmas stockings of relatives and friends with 60-watt Philips LEDs — light-emitting diode — light bulbs, and this holiday I’ll do it again. Why give a present few people even know they want? Because LEDs are the gift that keeps on giving, saving money every month on electric bills. […]
Posted inGoat
Oregon natural gas export terminal gets first approval
For onlookers watching the ongoing development of a proposed natural gas terminal in Coos Bay, Ore., it seemed a puzzling business strategy. Why would energy companies want to spend billions of dollars building a natural gas terminal and pipeline to import foreign gas when the domestic market was about to blow up? This September, the […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
The trouble with transmission
New transmission lines are just another way to steal natural resources from low-population states (HCN, 11/14/11, “A transmission transformation”). The residents of these states have to live with the infrastructure required to create and transmit energy — whether it’s generated by coal, solar or wind – but we only see the returns during the initial […]
Posted inArticles
Feds Link Water Contamination to Fracking for the First Time
In a first, federal environment officials today scientifically linked underground water pollution with hydraulic fracturing, concluding that contaminants found in central Wyoming were likely caused by the gas drilling process. The findings by the Environmental Protection Agency come partway through a separate national study by the agency to determine whether fracking presents a risk to […]
Posted inGoat
Friday News Roundup: Nuclear uncertainty
The American nuclear industry had some serious shade thrown its way in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant disaster. Almost a year later, U.S. nuclear still can’t seem to catch a break. On Wednesday, Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, announced that the agency will likely face delays in renewing […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Hersh Saunders’ transformation from prosthodontist to kosher slaughterer
In a barn on his 400-acre ranch south of Pueblo, Colo., Hersh Saunders sharpens a long blunt-end knife called a halaf. A blue crocheted kippah, a Jewish skullcap, covers the bearded rabbi’s silver hair. Outside the barn, sheep graze and chickens peck near a small synagogue and rows of organic vegetables. Saunders has spent the […]
Posted inGoat
The Estonian connection: Or how I started worrying about oil shale
The last big oil shale* boom in the West busted on “Black Sunday” 1982. I was 11 years old, then, living in Western Colorado, and I can still remember my dad explaining the boom, the bust and the process necessary to get the “oil” out of the shale. Here’s a primer: Underground room and pillar […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
A citizen activist forces New Mexico’s dairies to clean up their act
Jerry Nivens lives in a trailer in Caballo, N.M., 165 miles south of Albuquerque. A bulky Texas transplant who chain-smokes American Spirits, Nivens cares as deeply for his mesquite-speckled patch of ground as any rural New Mexican. He enjoys driving into the mountains, where he used to while away afternoons panning for gold. He goes […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: speeding renewable projects on tribal lands
Recent efforts to speed the process of approving surface leases on tribal lands have moved slower than a Mojave Desert tortoise. But regulations proposed by the Interior Department Monday could help tribes more quickly gain Bureau of Indian Affairs approval for renewable energy, residential, or business leases on some of the 56 million acres of […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Can an old mine become a work of art?
As I wander past a scrawled “NO TRESSPASSING: SHOTGUN ENFORCED” sign, I can’t help but recoil and glance around. I am, after all, on private property, and instinct is instinct. My safety at this particular mining site, however, is assured: I’m with a bunch of internationally acclaimed artists and a slew of locals. Even the […]
Posted inGoat
Don’t drink the (benzene) water
In 2005, Louis Meeks’ water well in Pavillion, Wyo., which had reliably supplied his family for decades, suddenly turned brown and filmy, and smelled like gasoline. When he tried to drill a new domestic well, water, steam and natural gas exploded some 200 feet into the air. Meeks and some of his neighbors, whose well water […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
A Texas town welcomes dairies; a New Mexico activist fights them
Stephanie Paige Ogburn interviews an activist in New Mexico who worked with the state to regulate pollution from groundwater, then speaks with an economic development director in Muleshoe, Texas — just across the border — who has actively recruited dairies to her town.
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Farm incubators help would-be farmers succeed on their own
Four years ago, Nelida Martinez’s teenaged son got sick. The herbal remedies she’d learned from her grandmother in Oaxaca, Mexico, didn’t help, so she took him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with leukemia. Martinez, a 38-year-old farmworker with a shy smile and laugh lines from a life spent in the sun, had followed […]
Posted inRange
The ranchers who turned the tide against the XL pipeline
By Lisa Song, InsideClimate News Connie and Leon Weichman had just finished branding some calves Monday when Connie’s niece texted her the news: TransCanada, the Alberta-based company that wants to build an oil pipeline through the middle of the United States, had finally agreed to reroute it away from the Nebraska Sandhills where the Weichmans live […]
Posted inRange
Changing the way renewables are funded
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House In the months since Solyndra’s collapse, there have been many inquiries into who knew what and when, and why this particular company was chosen to receive $528 million in loan guarantees. Did the White House hand-pick Solyndra as a quid pro quo for campaign contributions? Did the Department of Energy […]