Wind power has all the ingredients of a good brain-buster. The energy that windmills produce helps to preserve the environment, but the giant wind generators themselves have to be added to the environment. Wind power is making us redefine what we consider pollution. Windmills may not billow black smoke that require scrubbing or leak hazardous […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inAugust 6, 2007: Guns R Us
Changing the world, one car at a time
NAME Greg Rock VOCATION Inventor, owner and co-founder of the Green Car Company FAVORITE BEER Red Hook HE SAYS “If we go the green route, I think the world will follow us. If we don’t, hopefully the world won’t!” WHAT HE’S READING NOW The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook When he speaks about […]
Posted inWotr
America needs clean water – and mining law reform
Back in the early 1870s, Gen. George Armstrong Custer was among those excited by the rumor of gold and glory in the Black Hills of South Dakota, my home state. A lot has changed since then, but the same law that presided over gold mining in Custer’s day — the Mining Law of 1872 — […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
When the Joneses go solar
As photovoltaic panels pop up on rooftops, planners feel the pain
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
Hydrogen Highway Revisited
Is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to fill California highways with hydrogen-fueled cars visionary — or just hot air?
Posted inWotr
Who will pick up the pieces when this boom ends?
Sometime in the 1950s, an oil and gas boom hit Big Piney, Wyo. I was 12, and I remember the excitement of seeing new kids in school, big trucks on the dusty roads and lots of people in the cafés and on the streets. I remember summer evenings when my dad loaded us into the […]
Posted inWotr
Who gets to produce electricity is galvanizing the West
Plans are on the drawing table for another wave of coal-fired power plants across the West. But unlike 25 to 30 years ago, during the last binge in building power plants, this time there is opposition from a critical source — local ratepayers. This opposition should not be over-stated. In most areas, the electrical co-ops […]
Posted inJune 25, 2007: Predator hunters for the environment
The red, white and blue of ‘red or green?’
New Mexico’s chile industry faces hot competition from global producers
Posted inJune 11, 2007: Brave New Hay
Brave New Hay
Is Monsanto erasing the line between what is natural and what is not?
Posted inJune 11, 2007: Brave New Hay
Native hum
As honeybees vanish, farmers turn to the wild pollinators in their back yards
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Two weeks in the West
Just about every dinky diner in the Northwest’s logging country used to have a supplemental menu. Beside the grease-spattered board offering up fried eggs and bacon was another touting items such as spotted owl stew. It was a joke, of course, a jab at the endangered bird that many loggers blamed for the demise of […]
Posted inArticles
Can Congress drag the 1872 Mining Law into the 21st century?
Today’s hardrock mines are nothing like the pick-and-shovel operations of the mid-19th century, but they are still governed by 19th century laws. Under the General Mining Act of 1872, anyone who stakes a claim on public land for metals such as gold, silver and uranium can extract the ore royalty-free and, until a moratorium 13 […]
Posted inWotr
I’ll take a double dare any time
I was that moronic kid who would do anything my brother dared me to, even if that involved, say, taking an ice ball to the face (“You flinched! You lose!”). I’m over the need for my big brother’s approval, but I still love a challenge. I took up one recently, after reading an interview in […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
Cow power
Entrepreneurs hope to cash in on Idaho dairy country’s stinky problem
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
The need to remember Black Sunday
Is there any more fitting reminder that May 2 marked the 25th anniversary of “Black Sunday” than recent word that ExxonMobil wants to get back into the oil shale business? For all of you newcomers to the West — and to those of us who’ve spent 25 years trying to forget it — May 2, […]
Posted inWotr
Asarco would take us back to a polluted past
I remember the first time I tasted the air near the Asarco copper smelter in El Paso, Texas. It was 1990, and my wife and I had just moved there from Tucson, Ariz., to start teaching jobs in the English Department at the campus of the University of Texas-El Paso. I soon met two professors […]
Posted inArticles
Battle line on the northern border
In Montana’s Flathead Basin, another industry–versus-environment conflict is brewing. But this time, the battle lines follow the U.S. – Canada border. Montana senators, federal agencies, and even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are trying to stop a planned mine just north of the border. Cline Mining Corporation is seeking British Columbia’s approval for a mountaintop […]
Posted inWotr
Black Sunday was a day to remember
Is there any more fitting reminder that May 2 marked the 25th anniversary of “Black Sunday” than recent word that ExxonMobil wants to get back into the oil shale business? For all of you newcomers to the West — and to those of us who’ve spent 25 years trying to forget it — May 2, […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
The hidden costs of our coal habit
Sometimes ignorance feels like bliss. When you’re stowing your breakfast eggs and sausage, you don’t want to think too much about their origins. But ignorance is also dangerous. Take, for example, the electricity that powers the stove and coffeepot behind your morning breakfast. Today, more than half of U.S. electricity comes from burning coal. This […]
Posted inApril 2, 2007: Disposable Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields
Disposable workers of the oil and gas fields
If you don’t have a college degree, it’s the best job in the West. Unless you die, unnoticed.