The growth machine is dead

In 2008, the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University released a report called Megapolitan: Arizona’s Sun Corridor. It predicted that the corridor, stretching from Nogales in the south to Prescott in the north, with Phoenix and Tucson at its heart, would more than double its population by 2040, requiring some 3.7 million housing units and 2.4 million acre feet of water. When the report was being put together, the idea that this particular stretch of Arizona would house 10 million people in just a few decades wasn’t just realistic, it seemed inevitable -- after all, the region’s identity was tied up with that revved up growth machine.

Even as the report was making its initial round, the very foundations of its predictions were crumbling into the sand. After reaching its peak during the summer of 2006, the housing boom deteriorated, and the construction industry, which had provided nearly 1 in every 10 jobs in the Phoenix area, was hemorrhaging. The state’s estimates of population, which were based on the assumption that nearly all the new houses that had been built since 2000 were occupied, were proven wrong, because at least one out of ten of those new homes turned out to be empty.

Nevertheless, in 2009 the lead authors of the Megapolitan report, while admitting that their projections now sounded a “little out of tune,” continued to believe that the growth would return.

It hasn’t. And it won’t, at least not anytime soon.

Read the rest of this post at the HCN Goat blog, where I'll continue to delve into this question: With the housing boom gone, where does the West go now? What will it mean for cultures, communities and the environment? 

Koch, coal and cash

The cynic in me hardly batted an eye when I read recently that Republican House Speaker John Boehner is raking in coal-stained cash. Nor did I spill my coffee when I noticed that one of Boehner’s big new donors is a Koch brother. My interest was piqued, however, when I saw that it wasn’t David or Charles Koch -- the infamous Tea Partier billionaires -- who were forking out for the Republican leader, but the “other” brother, Bill.

Read more about Bill Koch's shift in his political donations at the HCN Goat blog, where I'll be doing most of my posting while I'm in Boulder (though I'll continue to occasionally throw something up here). 

On the way to the corn

Water tank outside of Questa, New Mexico

A mysterious swath of landscape lies in a place that's north of Northern New Mexico and south of Southern Colorado. Some might place it on the fringe of the Taos Plateau, others on the edge of the San Luis Valley. It's an old place, and mostly empty. Here, wild horses have gnawed shrubs to dust; here the harsh white of an abondoned trailer sits juxtaposed against the Blanca Peak, rising out of a haze.

People here keep to themselves, mostly, but their broken dreams scatter the earth for everyone to see.

I passed through here recently on my way to Taos to see the work of Tiwa Farms (more on that later) and to see one of my favorite landscapes in the world. 

Abandoned adobe, Costilla, New Mexico.

The Exceptional Institute, San Luis, Colorado.

The Rio Grande before it enters the Gorge.

Storefront, San Acacio.

The Global West

I've been back in the US of A for just over a month now, and the culture shock is waning. Kinda. After spending a year in Berlin, my wife, daughters and I came back for the summer. I'll be sticking around for another nine months, as a Ted Scripps Environmental Journalism Fellow at CU Boulder. I'm super excited about the opportunity; I'll be taking classes, reporting and writing, with a focus on environmental issues in the West.

Which is just what I focused on for several months while still in Berlin: I wrote a monster of a story for High Country News about global economic influences on the extractive industries of the West. It's some crazy stuff. Check out the story, and accompanying infographics here. And starting in mid-August or so, you can follow my musings about the region at the Goat blog at hcn.org.

CaliforniaHydropower

Fracking, nuclear waste and wolves: The West in Europe

Sometimes, sitting here in downtown Berlin, listening to American classic rock on the radio, I feel like I never left the American West. And it's not just the radio, or even Randy Rudd's Lucky Star Western Store in a nearby neighborhood. No, it's the news -- the environmental news, even. Some recent am-I-in-the-West headlines:

• LONE WOLF ATTACKS 15 SHEEP. Wolves had been systematically exterminated in Germany by the early 1900s, much as they were in the U.S. West. But those crazy wolves ignored borders, and over the years continued to wander over from Poland into East Germany. When East and West were reunified, the government gave wolves protected status. Now, about 60 are in the country, mostly roaming around military training grounds and old strip mines, occasionally having a sheepy feast. And it's causing the same sorts of conflicts as in the U.S. Hunters are upset. Ranchers are scared (though, as in the U.S., they get reimbursed by the government for any livestock they lose), and some residents are pretty sure the wolf's going to eat their children. Yesterday, Das Bild (the sensationalist tabloid) ran the first photo of "der Killerwolf von Brandenburg."

• EUROPE GETS FRACKED, TOO: That's right. That zany method of drilling and then "fracturing" the shale in which natural gas is trapped by shooting thousands of gallons of water -- mixed with a mysterious soup of chemicals -- into the ground is coming to Europe. It's been common in the West for a long time, and news outlets like High Country News have been questioning it for just as long. But it wasn't until fracking headed east, to Pennsylvania and New York, that most of the nation actually started noticing. Now, the practice is about to hit Europe (actually, Halliburton has already done it in Poland), and the rest of the world's getting a taste of that sweet and fizzy fracking soda. Of course, as the CEO of Cuadrilla energy, a UK drilling company, said: It's not fracking that's unconventional, it's the source where the gas is found that's unconventional. Which means what, exactly?

• THOUSANDS PROTEST NUCLEAR WASTE SHIPMENTS: Germany actually has more nuclear waste dumps than the West (though certainly not more contaminated sites, in general, i.e. abandoned uranium mines, mills, etc.). But, like the West, they take nuclear waste from other countries. Still, when did you last hear about thousands of Americans protesting against all that nuke waste headed across the region to WIPP in southern New Mexico? That's right, you didn't. You gotta hand it to the Germans: They know how to protest.

Now, what happens when the wolves hang out in the nuclear waste dumps?

Linguistic bigotry, Western stores in Berlin, and more

On a recent Friday afternoon here in Berlin, the sun was shining and the temperature actually rose above freezing for once. It was enough to put Wendy and Elena and me into especially high spirits as we waited for the bus in well-heeled Zehlendorf, eating some treats from the nearby bakery. We talked about how the Germans have a talent not only for making good cake, but also for creating really healthy and tasty baked goods, like the sunflower-seed thing we were eating. As we were speaking amongst ourselves we were, naturally, speaking in English.

Apparently, that's an offensive act around these parts.

Also waiting for the bus was a lumbering woman, perhaps in her sixties, who looked as if she had eaten just a few too many cans of offal. She glared at us and, finally, as we were getting on the bus, she muttered to Wendy, in German: "When you are in Germany, you must speak German!"


Finish reading this, along with a post about a Western store in Berlin and more at gin & gelato...