A story I wrote for High Country News in 1980 about the serious dangers of a highly polluted uranium-milling operation in the Union Carbide company town of Uravan, Colorado, where even the health clinic was built on radioactive tailings and settling ponds that leaked environmentally damaging processing residues into the San Miguel River. That story sparked a years-long shutdown and cleanup of the Carbide's operation.
More than a half-century ago, Tom Bell of Lander, Wyoming, bought a weekly recreational newsletter and eventually turned it into a shoestring operation called High Country News. He soon extended its coverage of the environmental crisis that he saw plaguing his state and much of the rest of the American West. Based in Colorado since the early 1980s, the feisty and sometimes fierce HCN has always focused on issues mostly ignored or poorly understood by major media. In the past few years, it has extended its coverage again to include the voices of Indigenous Americans and other people of color with stories to tell about the continuing impacts of generations of environmental injustice and suggestions and measures to improve matters. The publication has survived financially over the decades thanks to the ongoing generosity of its readers.
In recent issues, HCN has published an excellent array of stories on what has been one of the West's perennially troublesome issues—water.
Much of the West—cities, farms, and tribal lands alike—relies on the Colorado River and the giant Lake Powell and Lake Mead reservoirs that it feeds—40 million Americans altogether. That's 12% of the U.S. population. Currently, Lake Mead, whose water releases generate electricity for millions, is only 35% full. In the 100 years since seven states signed the Colorado River Compact, it's estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey that the river's flow has dropped 20%, more than half this attributed to climate change. The USGS concludes that if aggressive action isn't taken to control greenhouse gas emissions, that flow could fall another 31% by 2050. Since 2000, historic drought has afflicted the entire Colorado River Basin. Water storage in the lakes—the two largest artificial reservoirs in the nation—are at their lowest levels since Lake Mead initially began to fill in 1936 and Lake Powell in 1963. If this trend continues, the ecological and economic consequences will be enormous.
Last summer, the Bureau of Reclamation declared the first-ever water shortage for the Lower Basin states of Arizona. Consequently, downstream releases from Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam will be reduced this year. The impacts will be particularly harmful to agriculture, where the effects of the lengthy drought have already been deeply felt. Said Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Tanya Trujillo in an August 2021 statement, "Like much of the West, and across our connected basins, the Colorado River is facing unprecedented and accelerating challenges. The only way to address these challenges and climate change is to utilize the best available science and to work cooperatively across the landscapes and communities that rely on the Colorado River."
At High Country News, Theo Whitcomb reported on the annual Colorado River Water Users Conference held in Las Vegas last month. The tone was one of urgency. As noted by John Fleck, director of the University of New Mexico Water Resources Program, "We've shifted from having discussions about what we might have to do at some point in the distant future to discussions of what we might have to do next year. It's really no longer a drill."
Worried water officials aren't just throwing up their hands. Representatives of the Lower Basin states of Nevada, Arizona, and California announced at the conference a "500+ Plan" to hold back an additional 500,000 acre-feet of water annually in Lake Mead starting this year:
HCN has covered water and the impacts of drought, politics, and laws governing rights of use for as long as the publication has been in existence—decades over which other national media coverage was barely a trickle. Here are a few of HCN's other recent stories on the subject:
The incredible shrinking Colorado River
Will the climate crisis tap out the Colorado River?
Where is central California's water going?
In California's Central Valley, the water is contaminated and solutions are slow
Corporations are consolidating water and land rights in the West
Utah has a water dilemma
Indigenous feminism flows through the fight for water rights on the Rio Grande
WEEKLY VIDEO
YouTube VideoSHORT TAKES
Indigenous people join with conservationists to protect swaths of U.S.
Conservation groups have been working together with Natives to buy lands and put them under the permanent protection of the tribes. At least in the few instances where it has occurred, it's been a good fit and could provide a model for many more. As Hallie Golden writes at The Guardian, Indigenous people make up just 5% of the world's population. Still, according to "The Indigenous World" report in 2020, their territories contain 80% of the planet's biodiversity. Nature on Indigenous peoples' lands is "generally declining less rapidly" than other lands, according to the 2019 "Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services."
Those reports added some hard data to what's been apparent to experts in the field for a very long time—known yet all too often ignored. But ever more frequently, non-Native conservationists have been paying more attention to Natives' traditional ecological knowledge. And now environmental groups and Natives are working together to protect nature. Land transfers are part of that. It's one element in a growing "land back" movement among some Native organizations and their allies, conservationists, and others. There are many points of view on how far this can or should go. For example, Ojibwe author and historian David Treuer has called for turning the National Parks over to the descendants of the nation's original inhabitants from whom it was frequently stolen at gunpoint or obtained by swindle. The land conservation group's approach is not so grand as that.
It amounts to a dozen acres in Oregon returned to the Clatsop-Nehalem Confederated Tribes, 1,000 acres to the Esselen Tribe in California, the 132 acres of the Safe Harbor Marsh Preserve on Flathead Lake in Montana to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and the largest amount so far, 9,243 acres in Washington state to the Colville Tribes. The Washington land was purchased after Conservation Northwest raised $4.6 million. The transfer took place at a ceremony in October after the tribe approved a covenant outlining how they will protect the land.
The Nature Conservancy made its transfer in September. The Salish and Kootenai, who reportedly have a strong natural resources department, are quite familiar with the preserve since it was once part of the tribe's reservation. It slipped out of tribal hands as a consequence of early 1900s federal allotment acts designed to break up tribes across the U.S. and destroy their cultural cohesiveness. The tribe had for years sought to buy the land back, but soaring prices made that impossible, so they were glad when the conservationists asked them if they were interested. Said tribal chairwoman Shelly Fyant, "It's just so amazing and, you know, really heartwarming that we have allies that understand us. They understand what our goals are, you know, in the big picture. It's not about money; it's not about making a profit or capitalism or development. It's about conserving it for future generations, so that our descendants can enjoy that."
E.O. Wilson, known as "Darwin's natural heir," died in late December, age 92
In an obituary, Jennifer Yachnin writes:
Tesla delivered over 936,000 EVs in 2021, an 87% gain over 2020.
Tesla had hoped to have its giant new Giga Berlin factory cranking out electric vehicles by October, but the German government's review and approval of final permits is still weeks, perhaps even a couple of months away. Although construction on Giga Texas began two months later than the German operation, the plant near Austin is slated to begin turning out volume production of EVs next week. Nonetheless, the company still managed to deliver more than 936,000 EVs in 2021. Many analysts have been projecting that Tesla will manufacture 1.2-1.3 million EVs in 2022, but if the new plants ramp up production as quickly as the Shanghai plant did last year, the total could hit 2 million.
An aerial view of Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory
Other companies—GM, Ford, Stellantis, VW, and now even a previously reluctant Toyota—are promising major shifts in their operations, with tens of millions of electric vehicles cranked out by the end of the decade, thanks to tens of billions of dollars invested in new operations, including several battery production plants. Lucid and Rivian will also be making EVs though their success at mass production of any kind of vehicle is yet to be proven.
Ford originally had planned by 2024 to be annually manufacturing 40,000 F-150 Lightnings, the company's EV pickup. But it has twice boosted those plans, and now says it will make 150,000 of the pickups that year along with 200,000 electric Mustang Mach-Es. But the company still plans to be selling only 1.5 million EVs by 2030 along with 3 million internal combustion vehicles.
Meanwhile, GM's CEO, Mary Barra, says it will catch Tesla by 2025—even though she also says the company will be producing a million EVs that same year. That's well short of catching up. Tesla can be expected to manufacture 4.5-5 million EVs by then. At the Consumer Electronics Show on Wednesday, GM held an unveiling of the Silverado EV, its pickup truck, expected in 2023. And once again, she just flat-out lied, saying GM is the EV leader. It's not. And the way things are going, it's not likely ever to be. VW, which sold about 400,000 EVs in 2021, last year vowed it would capture 35% of the European EV market by 2030. But it has since raised that goal to 70%, and will, it says, shoot for 50% of the market in the United States and China by decade's end. EV makers in the Peoples Republic could make that a steep climb for the German automaker. VW sold about 75,000 EVs in China in 2021. Among the Chinese companies already making large numbers of EVs are BYD, which sold 593,745 of them in 2021. Xpeng sold 98,000, and Nio sold 91,000.
Whichever of all these companies actually reaches its goals, it's clear that EVs are finally crushing the ridicule with which they have been slathered and moving out of the niche market and into the mainstream. That process will accelerate as falling battery-pack prices make EVs as cheap as comparable ICE cars as early as next year. Some critics, such as resident Wall Street Journal science denier Holman Jenkins Jr., argue that switching to EVs won't save the world from climate impacts because they contribute only a small portion of greenhouse gas emissions. Merely switching to EVs aren't, of course, all that needs doing about the climate crisis, far from it. But that supposedly small portion for passenger cars and light-duty trucks constitutes 58% of transportation GHG emissions and 17% of total emissions from all sources. So zeroing them out is as important as zeroing out emissions from the power sector (25%) and industry (23%).
GREEN QUOTE
"No settled family or community has ever called its home place an 'environment.' None has ever called its feeling for its home place 'biocentric' or 'anthropocentric.' None has ever thought of its connection to its home place as 'ecological,' deep or shallow. The concepts and insights of the ecologists are of great usefulness in our predicament, and we can hardly escape the need to speak of 'ecology' and 'ecosystems.' But the terms themselves are culturally sterile. They come from the juiceless, abstract intellectuality of the universities which was invented to disconnect, displace, and disembody the mind. The real names of the environment are the names of rivers and river valleys; creeks, ridges, and mountains; towns and cities; lakes, woodlands, lanes roads, creatures, and people."—Wendell Berry
ECO-OPINION
Climatologist Katherine Hayhoe
An Evangelical Climate Scientist Wonders What Went Wrong. At The New York Times Magazine David Marchese interviews renowned climatologist Katherine Hayhoe, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy and a professor of political science at Texas Tech. Her most recent book—Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World—is just one more reason she has become such a sought-after voice on climate activism and a leading advocate for communicating across ideological, political, and, yes, theological differences. She says, "For many people now, hope is a bad word. They think that hope is false hope; it is wishful thinking. But there are things to do—and we should be doing them."
Don't Look Up Doesn't Get the Climate Crisis. A big part of why decarbonization is hard is that there's no "do or die" deadline, and each individual emissions-reducing reform is negligible—which makes it easy for even the most aware to deprioritize climate, by Eric Levitz at New York Magazine
Don't Look Up Was Good for Climate Cinema, Even If You Hated It. As critics debate Adam McKay's latest film, perhaps the better question is where movies about climate change should go from here, by Eleanor Cummings at The New Republic
The World Is Half-Prepared for a Different Energy Future. "The world has started to reduce its investment in producing fossil fuels. Right now, the world's investment in oil and gas supply looks to be, somewhat shockingly, on track with a pathway of 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, according to the International Energy Agency. At the same time, the world is investing as much as ever in cars, power plants, and other products that use fossil fuels. That is, our investment in oil and gas demand still assumes a more-than-1.5-degree pathway. Consumers, companies, and countries seem to be assuming that oil and gas will be just as plentiful in the future as they are now," by Robinson Meyer at The Atlantic.
This Year Has to Be the Beginning of the End for Big Oil. In 2021, we got to watch oil companies squirm. There needs to be a lot more squirming in 2022 to save the climate, by Molly Taft at Gizmodo
The 30-year-old South Texas Project nuclear power station near Bay City.
Germany is closing its last nuclear plants. What a mistake. "Nuclear energy frightens many people. But the deadly chemicals that coal plants spew into the air should scare them more. So should the existential threat of climate change. At the least, countries with legacy nuclear power plants—the United States has many—should aim to keep them online for as long as possible rather than repeat Germany's mistake," by the editorial board of The Washington Post
Youth of color are tired of Biden's empty climate promises. "Biden's defenders might argue that Trump left Biden such a mess, or that it's only been a year and he needs more time. But there isn't enough time in the world if the Biden administration doesn't reconsider its approach to climate change as a whole," by Vanessa Taylor at Mic One Unexpected Way for Biden to Help the Climate and Rural America at the Same Time. The president has the power to reform the wayward Tennessee Valley Authority. It's a bigger deal than you think writes Dorothy Slater at The New Republic
Shrinking the Economy to Save the Planet. "Degrowth" Isn't Just About the Economy. It's About Culture. To save the planet, the degrowth movement calls not for us to sacrifice prosperity, but to redefine it, by Peter Sutoris at Undark.
Industrialized Farming Has Unleashed an Insect Apocalypse. "Every year there are slightly fewer butterflies, fewer bumblebees—fewer of almost all the myriad little beasts that make the world go round. Estimates vary and are imprecise, and many insects, particularly those in the tropics, are simply not being systematically counted by anyone, but the data we do have overwhelmingly suggest a pattern of decline. For example, in Germany, the biomass of flying insects fell by 76 percent in the 27 years to 2016. In the U.S., monarch butterfly numbers have fallen by 80% in 25 years. In the U.K., butterflies have halved in abundance since 1976, when I was 11 years old. These changes have happened in our lifetimes, on our watch, and they continue to accelerate," by Dave Goulson at Truthout
ECO-TWEET
HALF A DOZEN MORE THINGS TO READ
Energy, environment issues to watch in every spending bill, by George Cahlink
Coming Soon to This Coal County: Solar, in a Big Way. In Martin County, Ky., where coal production has flatlined, entrepreneurs are promising that a new solar farm atop a shuttered mine will bring green energy jobs, by Cara Buckley
"Cultural resources are not a renewable thing for us." A lack of tribal consent on green energy projects is perpetuating environmental injustice. The West's largest green energy storage project would destroy a site sacred to the Yakama Indian nation whose citizens use it for ceremonies and for collecting almost three dozen different kinds of roots, flowers and shrubs. Now, the nation is fighting back, by Sarah Sax
Stepping UP in 2021: #2 Solar workers' rights and leading by positive example. Globally, companies are under Increasing pressure to be held more accountable, particularly when it comes to sustainability and just working conditions. With this in mind, pv magazine's scrutinized what solar and energy storage companies could do to lead by positive example when it comes to the workers, often far removed, who are involved in the production of their products and services, by Becky Beetz
Interior finds US has twice as many abandoned oil and gas wells as previously thought. In 2019 the Department of Interior calculated there were some 56,600 abandoned or orphaned oil and gas wells across 30 states. But in a memo released Wednesday, the department said it has documented 130,000 such wells, by Zach Budryk
Hog farming has a massive poop problem. Inside North Carolina's search for solutions for its thousands of pig manure lagoons, by Laura Bult.