On April 18, a wildflower photographer looking for blooming balsamroot on the Oregon slopes of the Columbia River Gorge happened to glance down and see dozens of black tankers barreling along the railroad below. The identification numbers on the tankers’ warning signs revealed that they were carrying crude. Yet despite tragic derailments in the past […]
Oil
Posted inArticles
Hydrocarbon inhalation added to long list of oil & gas perils
CDC investigates yet another threat for one of the deadliest industries in the nation.
Posted inGoat
Coast Guard blames Shell for beached Arctic drill rig
On New Year’s Eve, 2012, Royal Dutch Shell’s Kulluk drilling platform ran aground off a southern Alaskan island called Sitkalidak. Last week, the U.S. Coast Guard released a 152-page report dissecting the incident in minute detail and squarely pinning the blame on the oil company and its contractors. The company had used the Kulluk – […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
The toxic legacy of Exxon Valdez
We are just beginning to understand the true cost of one of America’s worst ecological disasters.
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Battling plasticulture
An Oregon company turns plastic waste into fuel.
Posted inApril 16, 2012: The Other Bakken Boom
The Other Bakken Boom: America’s biggest oil rush brings tribal conflict
Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, a lilting swath of prairie in western North Dakota, was once a quiet place. Though thrice the area of Los Angeles, it had only 5,000 residents. Even New Town, a more populous district east of a reservoir called Lake Sakakawea, looked sparse and ephemeral. There was a granary, a fire station, […]
Posted inGoat
Carrots for conservation
A new conservation program that gives landowners incentives to improve habitat for lizard and prairie chicken.
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
In Search of Solidarity
Will hard times renew historic alliances between environmentalists and labor unions?