It can be tempting to think that the recent wildfire disasters in communities across the West were unlucky, one-off events, but evidence is accumulating that points to a trend.
In a new study, we found a 246% increase in the number of homes and structures destroyed by wildfires in the contiguous Western U.S. between the past two decades, 1999-2009 and 2010-2020.
By Justin Mikulka 2018 was the year the oil and gas industry promised that its darling, the shale fracking revolution, would stop focusing on endless production and instead turn a profit for its investors. But as the year winds to a close, it’s clear that hasn’t happened. Instead, the fracking industry has helped set new […]
By Eleanor Bravo Imagine: a deep, pristine aquifer persists without incident for more than 11,700 years in the Valley of San Augustin. It is revered and left unmarred by the community members who know of its existence, utilizing it respectfully and sustainably, leaving it intact—from the Ice Age until 2008. That is when a New […]
By William J. Kinsella Seventy-five years ago, in March 1943, a mysterious construction project began at a remote location in eastern Washington state. Over the next two years some 50,000 workers built an industrial site occupying half the area of Rhode Island, costing more than $230 million—equivalent to $3.1 billion today. Few of those workers, […]
By John R. Platt The number of oil and gas rigs in the U.S. has increased an astonishing 38 percent over the past year. That’s according to S&P Global Platts Analytics, which reported this week that the country had 1,070 rigs at the end of January, up from just 773 a year earlier. Experts expressed […]
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt announced Monday that the Trump administration is rolling back the Clean Power Plan to end the previous administration’s “war on coal” but there’s a big problem: Obama didn’t kill the coal industry—the market for cheap natural gas and increasingly affordable renewable energy did. Case in point, The Santa […]
New Mexico’s capital has joined the growing movement of U.S. cities committing to 100 percent renewable energy. On Wednesday, Santa Fe’s City Council unanimously adopted Mayor Javier Gonzales’ resolution directing City Manager Brian Snyde to develop a feasibility study on how the city can transition to renewables by 2025. Snyde will report the findings in […]
By Andy Rowell Amidst the continued dire warnings about climate change, censored scientists and stranded assets, the oil industry keeps on doing what it does best: keeps on belligerently looking for more oil and gas. Earlier this week, BP announced it had discovered what it is labelling a “significant new source of U.S. natural gas […]
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has long been tied to environmental risks such as spills. The frequency of spills, however, has long been murky since states do not release standardized data. Estimates from the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA) vary wildly. “The number of spills nationally could range from approximately 100 to 3,700 spills annually, assuming […]
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