Arizona has more clear, sunny days than any other state in the West. In the summer months, sheets of mirage-casting heat waves pour down across expansive miles of desert. Yet for years this sunny state has lagged in developing its solar industry, relying instead on coal and nuclear power. Recently, though, that’s started to change. […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inGoat
The long dark tea time of the split estate
An older couple — freshly retired from jobs on Colorado’s Californicized Front Range — decides it’s time to build a dream home somewhere on the state’s less populous Western Slope. They pick a dry mesa, scrubby with sage and rabbit brush, where the views go on for miles. The neighbors graze cows. The meadowlarks sing. […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Beef: It (should be) what’s for dinner
The reference in Andrea Appleton’s review of Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms (HCN, 8/03/09) to the “soil erosion and desertification intensive grazing can cause” is technically and ecologically incorrect. Modern, progressive ranchers follow a management scheme called intensive grazing that results in increasing the organic content of the soil, […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Pass on gas
I find it unfortunate that Randy Udall has suggested that natural gas, a fossil fuel, can save the world (HCN, 8/17/09). The implication is that the relatively recent discoveries about how to better exploit shale gas will be sufficient to meet a substantial part of our energy needs. The article gives citizens a false sense […]
Posted inGoat
“Nuclear whack-a-mole”
Last week, attorneys for the state of Utah joined the fray against nuclear-waste disposal company EnergySolutions by filing an appeal against a ruling that would allow the company to import foreign nuclear waste to the state. EnergySolutions, a Salt Lake City-based company that disposes of low-level radioactive waste from other states, has been in talks to import up […]
Posted inRange
Thunderstorm in late August
It slid into the Deer Lodge Valley, like twilight come too soon. When the storm first crossed the horizon I was up on the National Forest, rattling the four-wheeler along a rough two-track road that climbed through a series of meadows toward the Continental Divide. Around here, summer storms are mostly predictable. This particular weather […]
Posted inGoat
Down and out
Joe Griego hasn’t worked in nine months. He hasn’t been able to do much since a bull crushed his ribs and damaged his spinal cord while he was on the clock at a New Mexico dairy. He hasn’t been sitting around milking workers’ compensation checks while he recovers, either. In fact, Griego’s had little help […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
Solar salvation?
Timber companies and unemployed workers look to renewable energy for a boost.
Posted inGoat
Milk: It doesn’t always do a body good
If you haven’t read Rebecca Clarren’s excellent HCN cover story on the West’s immigrant dairy workers and the on-the-job dangers they face, do it now! If you have read it and want to learn more, you should check out the story’s hefty (and heavy) sidebar: A comprehensive list of deaths and injuries in the West’s […]
Posted inWotr
Parks for the people — not profit
The fog that often hangs over Drakes Estero, an estuary in California’s Point Reyes National Seashore, tends to obscure the natural features that make this small body of water one of the treasures of our national park system. This estuary, which has been designated a wetland of international importance, hosts one of the largest breeding […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
The dark side of dairies
A broken system leaves immigrant workers invisible — and in danger.
Posted inAugust 17, 2009: From Corn to Cabernet
Grousing about wind
In the topical and informative article about wind impact on sage grouse, I do take exception to the comment “At this point, no one really knows how turbines affect grouse” (HCN, 6/22 & 7/6/09). While it’s true that wind farms pose a negligible direct mortality threat, sage grouse do avoid vertical structures and are negatively […]
Posted inAugust 17, 2009: From Corn to Cabernet
Mission critical
Can natural gas help save us from global warming?
Posted inGoat
Natural gas, the miracle fuel!
Geez, it seems like it was just a few months ago that the natural gas boom was busting and the drill rigs were sent a-packin’. Natural gas prices cratered, thanks to the general economic malaise, and big shale gas plays in other parts of the country really dug into the West’s drilling boom. Meanwhile, all […]
Posted inWotr
You gotta dream big when you dream about oil shale
Things have quieted in the oil patch, and you don’t hear as many chants of “Drill, baby, drill” as we did last summer. Even so, there remains considerable interest in developing oil shale, as evidenced by a recent report from the Center of the American West in Boulder. America’s biggest deposits are roughly centered where […]
Posted inGoat
A Solar Plant a Tortoise Could Love
On the Web site of GreenBiz.com, Mark Gunther describes Bill Gross as “a serial entrepreneur” and “one of the most interesting business people I’ve known.” Gross is the guy who gave Google its paid-search idea. He likes robots. He has Google’s money invested in his electric car project (only fair, right?). He also may be […]
Posted inGoat
The rural West, on clearance
Statistics released by the USDA yesterday paint a sobering economic portrait of the rural West. The agency reported declines in agricultural land values across the country for the first time in more than 20 years. And it’s the Mountain states that have been clobbered worst of all. Montana farmland values fell a whopping 22.2 percent […]
Posted inGoat
California sun and spray
California’s farmworkers support an $11 billion industry, making the state the nation’s leading agricultural producer and exporter. But their working conditions are often difficult – they’re exposed to harmful pesticides and dangerous levels of thirst and heat. Now, the LA Times reports that the state is considering approval of another hazardous pesticide, and it’s facing […]
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
Revival or dam-nation?
The push for green power could spawn a rush for small hydropower projects in the Northwest
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
Just say “yes”
I am glad that Carl Zichella recognizes a current trend within the environmental movement: inaction (HCN, 6/22 & 7/6/09). I have done my part volunteering and writing letters for the Sierra Club and other groups focused around conservation/sustainability/general green-ness, but I am tired of constantly opposing things and never seeing any changes. If all the […]