A few weeks ago, I mused that the American Southwest may be on borrowed time. Forget that. The Southwest is toast. A new paper in Nature spells doom. From the abstract: The potential for increased drought frequency and severity linked to anthropogenic climate change in the semi-arid regions of the southwestern United States is a…Continue Reading…
Living in a marginal (but stunning) landscape with obvious constraints has its drawbacks when too many people move there and the natural resources become depleted. In the American Southwest, those drawbacks are not really being felt by the hordes who live there now. Yet. But based on my own knowledge of the drought history of…Continue Reading…
It’s out there, lurking. Here’s something warm and fuzzy for Westerners to wake up to this morning: Now before I get into the piece that follows I should explain that I don’t hold any particular animus towards the states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming or Idaho, and so when I start talking about disposing of nuclear…Continue Reading…
That’s the title of this counterintuitive post from Jonathan Thompson, the editor-in-chief of an environmental magazine. He riffs off a brewing controversy over spectacular places in the Southwest that might soon be nominated as National Monuments. Except it’s not some off-the-cuff riff. Thompson writes a poignant meditation on the complicated feelings he has about a…Continue Reading…
The pothunting story in Utah that has captured my attention is actually just one tentacle of a sprawling illegal antiquities investigation across the Southwest. I’ve known this for some time, having talked to various dealers snared in the federal sting operation. None of them have been arrested so their role has gone largely unmentioned in…Continue Reading…
Here’s a recipe for Memorial Day weekend madness: two boys, ages 2 and 4, two sleep-deprived parents, endless rain, long stretches in a car listening to the same three CD’s (Backyardigans, Dan Zanes, and some random Micky D’s happy meal compilation that includes a Cindy Lauper classic.) Incredibly, we decided to extend the insanity by…Continue Reading…
Here’s the understated yet majestic lede in this poignant essay by Laura Paskus in the current issue of High Country News: On the outskirts of Albuquerque, the desert has surrendered the bones of 12 young women. I’m a little uneasy with the larger theme of the piece, though, mainly because I think violence to women…Continue Reading…
As I outlined here, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) is grappling with global warming in a big way. Additionally, federal biologists from Florida to Arizona are currently at work on new long-range plans that factor in the unpredictable effects of climate change on vulnerable species. It’s a complicated task, fraught with many uncertainties….Continue Reading…
A big reason I’m drawn to the Southwest is for its well preserved archaeology. But that doesn’t mean it’s well protected, much less appreciated by native residents or politicians. That said, a cruel irony is that most new sites on public and state land are only discovered when a highway or shopping center or gas…Continue Reading…
This absurd post by Joseph Romm, in which he accuses The New York Times of “media malpractice” due to supposed errant climate change coverage in several recent stories, reveals a doctrinaire mindset on the relationship between global warming and natural disasters that is becoming all too common in environmentalists. Romm is ticked off because, among…Continue Reading…