Imagine Fewer Autos (It's Easy if You Try)

By Carlton Reid / On April 26th, 2016
In May, many of us will celebrate National Bike Month by leaving the car at home and cycling to work. It's often the fastest way across town, and it's a great way to get some exercise, reduce our carbon footprint and - importantly - remember that roads are not just for driving.

Guest Opinion: We need a moon-shot for the environment more than ever

By Dominick A. DellaSala / On April 25th, 2016
This week, more than 193 nations will celebrate Earth Day. The annual event is a marker for the environmental movement begun on April 22, 1970, when Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson organized a peaceful teach-in. At the time, rivers were on fire, oil spills fouled Santa Barbara’s coastline, spaceships were headed to the moon, and the nation was at war.

Reflections on Earth Day

By Katharine Sucher / On April 22nd, 2016
April 22nd, Earth Day, is also National Jelly Bean Day. How should one celebrate National Jelly Bean Day?

To Click or Not to Click?

By Lucy Moore / On April 22nd, 2016
A couple of weeks ago I scrolled through my 50 some emails of the day and was struck by one from Crowdrise. The subject line read “Have you saved an animal from extinction?” It was a 24 hour emergency campaign to save the Greater Bamboo Lemur in Madagascar. I glanced, saw there was video, and hit delete. The world is too big, I told myself, and I know too much already about the suffering of humans, animals and the planet itself. But the question has hung in my mind and led me to think about activism.  How do we choose what to spend our time and energy on? How can we be most effective?

This Earth Day, Focus on 21st Century Conservation

By Joe S. Whitworth / On April 21st, 2016
April 22 is not a moment to celebrate the wonder of this unique planet. It’s an opportunity to recognize what next steps we need to take to secure a better future.

Rants from the Hill: After many years of essay writing, a wave goodbye

By Michael Branch / On April 19th, 2016
The Rants from the Hill essay series has appeared in High Country News online every month, without fail, since July 2010. A lot has happened in those (almost) six years as we—my wife, Eryn, and our daughters, Hannah and Caroline—have lived as fully as possible our shared life here on a remote hill in western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. And now, with this farewell Rant, I draw the essay series to a close.

Anti-Vaxxed?

By Emily Monosson / On April 18th, 2016
In light of the fuss over Robert Di Niro and the movie Vaxxed; if anyone needs reminding of the value of vaccines, take a look at this diagram of 20th Century Death. These are estimates as they say but even so the numbers are humbling. I won’t go into the story behind the movie and its writer, director and one-time (now unlicensed) doc, that has been covered plenty (instead here is an interesting NYT article about the developer of the measles vaccine, Dr. Maurice Hilleman.

#ForewordFriday: Transit Street Design Edition

By Katharine Sucher / On April 15th, 2016
As cities strive to become more sustainable, livable, and healthy, they are increasingly becoming multi-modal. In 2014, Americans took 10.8 billion trips on public transit, the highest since the dawn of the highway era. But most of these trips are on streets that were designed to move private cars, with transit as an afterthought. The NACTO Transit Street Design Guide, a four-color book, places transit where it belongs, at the heart of street design.

On the need for better water data

By John Fleck / On April 14th, 2016
A student in one of our University of New Mexico Water Resources Program classes asked last week what the magic trick was to finding water data. We’d asked the students to do some really challenging modeling of the flow of water through New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande watersheds, and one of the biggest difficulties was finding usable data to plug into their models.

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