Just last September, the FDA granted permission to include two percent camelina meal — a byproduct of producing the fuel — in the mix given to feedlot beef cattle and swine. The meal has protein levels of 40 percent or more, and is also high in Omega-3 fatty acids. Camelina is well suited to Montana […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
Coming to blows
Tribal infighting delays Navajo wind development
Posted inGoat
Single-celled solar
There are few sights as lovely as a diatom. Single-celled, photosynthetic algae with intricate skeletons made of pure silica, they fascinated famous 19th century German zoologist Ernst Haekel, who painted this illustration in oils. Recently they have also become fascinating to scientists developing biologically-based solar panels. Diatoms are ecological workhorses. For at least 100 million […]
Posted inWotr
Interior Secretary Salazar is on the right track
I’m a third-generation Colorado native, and for me, the Rockies have always been all about blue skies and fresh air. Yet I’m old enough to remember the brown cloud that used to hover over Denver. I also remember that after amendments to the Clean Air Act took effect in 1990, I could once again see […]
Posted inGoat
spam…
Spam – not SPAM – is the stuff of evil Internet marketers. It’s bred in dark, dark spaces and spread to the intangible depths of E-mails and pop-up ads of YOUR computer. And today, I found out that spam’s got quite the environmental impact! Well, I’d never actually eaten SPAM until today, but I thought […]
Posted inApril 13, 2009: The Desert That Breaks Annie Proulx’s Heart
Golly, nukes for everybody!
The “innovative” proposal for many small “pocket” nuclear reactors sounds like the gee-whiz propaganda from the 1950s that every modern family would own a personal atomic car and reactors would produce power “too cheap to meter” (HCN, 3/16 & 3/30/09). In reality, it is an attempt to greenwash a failed technology. One lesson I have […]
Posted inGoat
James Herriot, we need you
How would you like to be a doctor with 37,000 patients? If you’re the lone veterinarian in Washington’s Adams County who treats food animals, that’s how many cows, sheep and pigs await your attention. A fall 2007 survey showed that many counties don’t have even a single vet trained to treat livestock. Three-quarters of newly-trained […]
Posted inGoat
Fire from the faucet
“Shock” and “terror:” that’s how Colorado resident Amee Ellsworth feels about her tap water. The stuff stinks, it causes strange sounds in her toilet and washing machine; and worst of all, she’s afraid it’ll blow up her house. When she turns on her kitchen faucet and flicks a lighter, foot-high flames leap from the tap. […]
Posted inGoat
Shale tests the waters
Between 105 and 315 million gallons of water per day: by current estimates, that’s the amount of water that could be swallowed by a 2.5-million-barrel-per-day-oil shale industry. It’s an impressive number, but a bit of an abstraction. For a more visceral take on the impacts of oil shale, take a look at the 25 opposition […]
Posted inGoat
Mixed messages
Yesterday, the New York Times had a swell interactive map that showed unemployment rates in every county in the nation. It showed that, with the exception of Michigan, the West is getting whacked by job losses harder than just about anyone else. California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington are all awash with high unemployment rates. The […]
Posted inWotr
We need a renewables roadmap
If anybody had any doubt that clean energy has arrived, President Obama’s speech to Congress Feb. 24 should dispel those concerns. Obama told Congress and the nation that clean energy, along with education and health care, are central to our economic revival. Obama recognized that if the United States can “harness the power of clean, […]
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
An underground uprising
Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor WarThomas G. Andrews386 pages, hardcover: $29.95.Harvard University Press, 2008. Rusted bits of metal, staircases to nowhere, perhaps a weathered gun tower: These fragments are all that remain of southern Colorado’s coal-mining towns. The casual visitor would never guess how central to Western history their inhabitants were. There is one […]
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
The little island that could
Last fall, a Viking washed up on my doorstep. His name was Soren Hermansen. For the past 10 years, he has spearheaded one of the most audacious experiments in the world: the attempt of 4,000 people living on the small Danish island of Samso to liberate themselves from fossil fuel. A few weeks after being […]
Posted inGoat
Wind power and wildlife don’t mix
Montana ranks fifth in wind energy potential in the U.S., with an estimated capacity of 116,000 megawatts over 17 million windy acres. To date, the state has installed less than 300 MW of wind power, but more projects are underway. Hoping to “spark cooperative efforts between wind energy and conservation interests, so that the promise […]
Posted inGoat
The rich black allure
Oil shale is kind of like online journalism — there’s such potential there, but from the looks of it, we may never figure out how to make a profitable industry of it. Which must partly explain the contradictions in Ken Salazar’s latest plans for the resource. Yesterday, the secretary of the interior announced he’ll be […]
Posted inGoat
Revving the “engine”
It’s become something of an Obama administration mantra: The latest economic stimulus package will help jumpstart the U.S.’s green economy. And at a press conference Feb. 20, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar repeated it yet again, as he spoke on how the Department of Interior, which oversees agencies like the National Park Service and the […]
Posted inGoat
Mule deer anti-decline?
A few years ago, an industry-funded study indicated that prolific natural gas development on Wyoming’s sagebrush-dotted Pinedale Anticline was hammering the massive mule deer herd that forages there in the winter. The herd, some 6,000 strong, had declined 46 percent between 2000 and 2004. A government-commissioned citizen oversight group pushed the Bureau of Land Management, […]
Posted inGoat
Yucca Mountain Death Watch
Is Yucca Mountain about to implode? In this first month after the inauguration of President and Yucca Mountain-opponent Barack Obama, it’s been a little hard to tell. Bush-appointed radioactive waste-czar Ward Sproat left the Energy Department on cue, but the man who rose from the ranks to temp in his spot, Christopher Kouts, spent 23 […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
Wind setbacks
Local governments grapple with where to put wind farms
Posted inGoat
Montana state senator proposes slaughterhouse
The shuttering of the last U.S. slaughterhouse in Illinois in 2007 and the tanking economy have created a glut of horses across the nation. Horse rescues have been filled to capacity. BLM wild horse auctions have drawn almost no bidders. These days you can hardly give a horse away, let alone sell one. Now comes […]