Water: Not Just for Fightin’

September 14, 2015

It is a little unusual for national newspapers to cover western water issues, but in August the Wall Street Journal ran a story about the year-long struggle over water rights proposed by the City of Glenwood Springs. The article was predictably superficial, but called national attention to something Western Slope residents understand to the core […]

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Does Anyone Talk Anymore?

September 14, 2015

When Howard Baker was majority leader of the U.S. Senate, he once famously remarked that the worst mistake Congress ever made was air conditioning the Capitol Building. In earlier times Congress met for only part of each year, and then returned home when the muggy August heat made Washington, D.C. practically uninhabitable — not to […]

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A Spoonful of Sugar Would Help This Medicine

August 19, 2015

Everyone may be entitled to a little hypocrisy once in a while, but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is abusing the privilege this week. The EPA accidentally caused a nasty spill that sent more than 3 million gallons of toxic sludge down the Animas River, turning its waters orange for 100 miles. The mess has […]

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What Part of Deadline…

August 19, 2015

A new study from a group called the R Street Institute has found that federal agencies missed half of all the deadlines imposed by Congress. Not just recently, not just in the current Administration, but for more than 20 years. The most shocking thing about this study is that nobody is shocked. There is so […]

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Try Something New

August 19, 2015

Yesterday I testified before an unusual committee in Congress, one with a membership made up almost entirely of westerners, and in particular westerners whose districts are mostly federal land. That is unique in Congress because rural westerners are a small minority. They normally have trouble explaining to their colleagues the nuances of public lands and […]

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Another One Bites the Dust

August 19, 2015

Voltaire once wrote that “men argue; nature acts.” We see that action repeatedly in catastrophic forest fires across the western United States, and each time we hope it may be the last. This week we’re seeing yet another forest go up in smoke – Glacier National Park in Montana – while land managers, politicians, lobbyists, […]

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Still Cuckoo

August 19, 2015

Last week I wrote about the federal push for private landowners in Mesa County to help identify and designate habitat for a bird called the yellow-billed cuckoo – the original mascot of Cocoa Puffs cereal. My column has rarely generated more feedback, because so many people are frustrated with the notion that environmental protection always […]

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Cuckoo Over Birds

July 18, 2015

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The federal government wants private landowners in arid western states to help identify and designate important habitat for a certain bird species, so the land can be protected against development, and thereby save the bird from some dire fate. If that sounds familiar, it’s because we have […]

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What, Me Worry?

June 26, 2015

I recently shared a conference podium with Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. He argues persuasively that our use of technology and energy has transformed the natural environment into a livable one. “Most of the natural world is too hot, too cold, has too much […]

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Not All Renewables Are Created Equal

June 17, 2015

This week the U.S. House Appropriations Committee is working on the annual spending bill that funds the Interior Department and the EPA, and there are all the usual arguments over how much the funding should increase. President Obama asked Congress to raise last year’s $30 billion by 10 percent, which is unlikely (the first draft […]

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