Why a Tesla Costs More Than a Model T

August 8, 2023

Henry Ford’s use of a moving assembly line finally made it possible for average working Americans to own cars. Automobiles were toys for the rich, but in 1920 Ford lowered the price of a new Model T to $260, about $3,500 in current dollars. Try buying a new car today for $3,500. What caused the […]

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Do We Still Need the “Big Straw?”

August 2, 2023

In the 1980s Gunnison philanthropist Butch Clark offered a novel way to end the age-old West Slope-East Slope water battles. He suggested that Denver could use the Colorado River’s remaining unallocated water by building a pipeline from the Utah line to the Continental Divide. No future Western Slope water use would be threatened; the only […]

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Green Energy – Easier Said Than Done

July 28, 2023

In 2019 the City Manager of Scottsbluff, Nebraska proudly cut the ribbon on a huge, multimillion-dollar, 5.2 megawatt solar farm of over 14,000 photovoltaic panels, saying, “This project will help the city achieve its goal to reduce our carbon footprint and stabilize city costs for the next 25 years.” That dream lasted less than four […]

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Headed for Court – Where Else?

July 21, 2023

The debate may soon turn to litigation on the Administration’s proposed new rule allowing public land to be leased for “conservation,” which is to say, for no use. The proposal was the subject of over 215,000 official comments from groups, businesses, local and state governments, and others, mostly objecting to it. Now that the comment period […]

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Having It Both Ways

July 17, 2023

A common expression says, “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.” That makes no sense, as one cannot eat cake if one doesn’t have cake. Of course, that is not how the saying really goes; it’s just a modern lazy version. The idiom dates from 1546, when John Heywood wrote, “would you both […]

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Fixing the Climate by Banning Things

July 5, 2023

I’ve been waiting since May for the media feeding frenzy I assumed would develop, when the Administration announced new rules to further restrict home dishwashers. There has been a deafening silence about it, though, maybe because such overreach no longer astonishes anyone. Or as Senator Bill Armstrong often said, “The only thing shocking about this […]

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Remember When the Judiciary was a Co-equal Branch of Government?

June 30, 2023

Former Interior Secretary Dave Bernhardt’s new book, “You Report to Me,” is edifying for anyone trying to understand why government has become so intrusive, partisan, divisive, and dare I say, dysfunctional. It is a first-hand backgrounder on the evolution of the “administrative state,” with eye-opening examples that beg the question, who is really in charge […]

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The End of a Divisive Era

June 23, 2023

A landmark era of American politics passes into the history books, with Jimmy Carter under end-of-life hospice care, and with the May 27 death of James Watt. Theirs was a moment in time that deserves remembering. Most of America’s essential environmental laws passed in the 1970s with relatively bipartisan support. Yet today, no environmental issue […]

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An Udderly Different Wildfire Strategy

June 16, 2023

Federal land managers and environmental industry lawyers are back in court, rearguing a decade long case about livestock grazing permits. It is a generational debate that finally shows an emerging consensus, though this lawsuit clarifies it’s not universal. Throughout the 1990s when I was at Club 20, one of the Western Slope’s more contentious issues […]

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Californians Want Water – But Not Theirs

June 9, 2023

People concerned about water levels in the West’s reservoirs should be able to cheer up now. The U.S. Drought Monitor system has removed drought status from the entire Western Slope and nearly all of California. Snowpack this winter was well above average for the entire Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, and nearly 50 percent above average […]

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