Mexico has its own issues with border crossers. According to Newsweek:

There’s ample precedent in Mexico for just about everything the United States is—or isn’t—doing. Calling out the military? Mexicans may hate the new U.S. plan to deploy 6,000 National Guard troops on the border, but five years ago they cheered President Vicente Fox for sending thousands of Mexican soldiers to crack down on their southern frontier. Tougher laws? Hispanic-rights groups are enraged over U.S. efforts to criminalize undocumented aliens—yet since 1974, sneaking into Mexico has been punishable by up to two years in prison…

It’s interesting to look at another country’s immigration policies. Stripped of the racial/ethnic conflict overtones of the U.S.-Mexico dispute, it provides a different view of border control and immigration issues.

Also, our Associate Editor Jonathan Thompson corrected me on the number of Mexicans living in the U.S. I calculated that 6% of Mexico’s population was living in the States. Actually, the real number is closer to 10%. Here’s a San Francisco Chronicle article on the topic, with a lot of interesting numbers and some thoughtful geopolitical analysis of the issue.

A wolf bites this woman’s dogs so suddenly she changes her mind about the wolf’s worth as a core component of the food chain and a necessary contributor to biodiversity. From the Casper Star Tribune:

A central Idaho couple who favored wolf reintroduction in the 1990s now say they have changed their minds after their dogs were bitten by wolves near their home.

“I love animals, I always have,” said Jennifer Swigert during a wolf management meeting last week with officials from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. “But this is insane. People are at a total risk of getting fanged up.”

It’s interesting when people support something until it personally inconveniences them — then they suddenly turn against it.

Apparently she’d given the issue about as much thought as one normally puts into choosing pizza toppings.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Here’s a pithy sum of the standard political dialog:

This is not a great moment for listeners in American society. The public conversation is dominated by those whose minds are unalterably made up, and we have come to view the man or woman whose views remain steadfast, even in the face of overwhelmingly evidentiary assault, as a kind of moral hero.

Ouch! … And the cut-to-the-quick comes from a good credential: Malcolm Gladwell, author of big-think books such as “The Tipping Point” and “Blink.” Gladwell slipped it into his brief profile of another provocateur, Steven Levitt, the author of “Freakonomics,” in Time Magazine’s recent special issue on 100 influential people.

And how true it is — we’re in the era of plugged ears. If you doubt it, check out the shouting heads in Congress, on Fox TV news and its clones, in all the ideological think tanks, and on the countless my-way-or-else blogs.

Gladwell says of the unlisteners:

Those people are not heroes, of course. They’re usually just stubborn.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Some of the West’s flagship daily newspapers seem to be disappearing in slow motion. They’re losing subscribers, year after year, despite the region’s surging population growth, which should supply more readers. The latest circulation numbers reveal the trouble.

During the past year, the San Francisco Chronicle’s circulation has dropped by 15 percent, according Editor & Publisher. Other hurting dailies include The Los Angeles Times (down about 5 percent), the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News (both down about 4.5 percent), Seattle Times (down 5 percent) and the Seattle Post Intelligencer (down 9 percent).

It’s an industrywide trend that began as far back as 1984. That’s the year when total U.S. daily newspaper circulation peaked, with 63.3 million people subscribing to 1,688 dailies, according to the New York Times and the Poynter Institute. Total circulation has sunk to about 45 million, and only 1,457 dailies remain afloat nationwide.

There are many causes: The media markets have gotten fragmented by the Internet and cable-TV “news” shows. The linear thinking that goes into sentences like this gets more and more tiresome for video-era audiences. And many dailies have a hard time figuring out how to evolve.

High Country News (a healthy species of journalism) examined how the West’s dailies fail to cover the region’s crucial issue: growth and development. That suggests some dailies deserve to sink.

But it’s not just a question of competence. A close-up of the San Francisco Chronicle shows that even dedicated, well-funded daily journalists can struggle to survive. The Chronicle operates in one of the most sophisticated, information-driven metro areas, and since 2000 it has burned money attempting to become a “world class” newspaper. In the process, its owners have lost about $250 million, according to the American Journalism Review.

The worrywart New York Times weighs in again:

The newspaper industry cut more than 2,000 jobs last year as it continued to lose readers and advertisers to the Internet. Network newscasts are being propped up by older viewers and continue to lose market share to cable. Regular reports of ethical breaches are undermining public trust in all news organizations, bloggers accuse the mainstream media of being arrogant and clueless, and Wall Street expresses little confidence in its financial future.

But the Times finds a bright side:

… There is one corner of the profession still enjoying a boom: journalism schools. … Demand for seats in the nation’s journalism schools and programs remains robust, and those schools and programs are expanding. This month, they will churn out more graduates than ever …

And why are so many young people going through college enthused about a career in journalism? One word:

GOAT.

Nah, not that thousands of fresh J-school grads are signing up to make this GOAT blog “world class.” It’s what GOAT represents: the online world of journalism.

None other than the San Francisco Chronicle sums up that upward trend:

(We’re) rapidly becoming a new-media world … 44 million Americans get their news primarily from the Internet, more than twice as many as in 2000, according to a recent study.

So today, this little GOAT blog feels like a wave of the future! Egads, better not get too heady about it …

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Many Western senators and representatives turn out to be weaklings in Congress, even if they’ve held their offices for decades. That’s the scathing conclusion of D.C. insiders who’ve released a new ranking of all Congress-folks, for a lobbyist consulting firm called, ahem, Knowlegis.

It’s fun! … And sometimes depressing! You can check your Congress-person’s rating, by clicking into the ratings website. As the Washington Post says:

Washington is a town where power is routinely won and lost, and where the pursuit of it never goes out of style. Now political junkies have a new way to track who has the most.

The highlights — or should we say, lowlights? — include:

Idaho’s archconservative Rep. Butch Otter apparently dwells in the basement of the House of Representatives — he’s ranked an abysmal #344 among the 438 House members. Maybe that explains why Otter is now running for Idaho’s governorship. Think Otter will mention his D.C. ranking in his Idaho political ads?

Some enviro champions do little better, or even worse: New Mexico’s Rep. Tom Udall comes in merely #384 in the House. His cousin, Colorado’s Rep. Mark Udall, ranks #295. And in the other chamber, Washington’s Sen. Maria Cantwell comes in an almost invisible #93 among the 100 senators.

The Knowlegis wise-guys explain:

Power is often hard to define, but for Congress it boils down to how effective one is at advancing an agenda, whether it is a personal agenda, party agenda or district or state agenda. Much of the power in Congress derives from tenure or years in Congress, which drive assignment to key committees (and eventually status as chair or ranking member). But years of service in Congress does not automatically equate to power as some long term members have very little power while freshman can sometimes be effective or powerful right out of the starting gate.

Not surprisingly, with Republicans holding a majority and dictating the agenda in both chambers, the elephantine party nearly sweeps the top rankings.

But thanks to some of the West’s prominent Republicans, the region does wield considerable power, particularly in the Senate. Arizona’s Sen. John McCain ranks #3 among the 100 senators, while New Mexico’s Sen. Pete Domenici comes in #6, and Utah’s Sen. Orrin Hatch gets #9.

The West’s powermongers also include the only Democrat clawing into the Senate’s top 10: Nevada’s Sen. Harry Reid (#5).

A few journalists have cranked out stories on the rankings, including the Associated Press. Focusing on the official cowboy state, the AP notices that even though Wyoming has well-established incumbents, they do not exactly swagger through the halls of Congress:

Among Wyoming’s congressional delegation, all Republicans, Sen. Craig Thomas ranked 53rd and Sen. Mike Enzi 65th in the Senate, while Rep. Barbara Cubin was ranked 160th out of 438 members in the House.

Another irony, the environmentalists’ current Dracula, California’s Rep. Richard Pombo, earns only a #56 ranking in the House. That probably means, Pombo huffs and puffs, getting a lot of publicity for his bills attempting to gut environmental laws, but really he doesn’t accomplish much.

Keep in mind, as the Washington Post reports, “The rankings do not take into account a lawmaker’s success in earmarking funds for the home district …” Meaning, your Congress-person may be a great bagman, bringing home the pork, but may not get much else done. That’s one kind of Congressonal wimp we enjoy — or tolerate.

For informed speculation on whether the West’s Democrats can win more power in near-future elections, check an in-depth story in High Country News. HCN also profiled the Udall cousins, describing how they’re in one of the West’s royal political families: Their fathers, Arizonans Mo Udall and Stewart Udall, were truly effective enviro champions during the 1960s and 1970s, partly because the family’s party (the Dems) happened to rule Congress back then.

One of the many sides of the multi-faceted immigration debate that we didn’t touch in HCN’s recent exploration of immigration was how immigration into the U.S. relates to population growth. In and of itself, it’s an interesting topic. But for the environmental community, it has become especially poignant, since it has created deep divides amongst those who are usually allies.

Former Gov. Dick Lamm, D-Colo., leads the environmental movement’s immigration restrictionist movement. “Immigration is the population issue in the United States,” Lamm says, in an HCN interview with him. “My world view is that the best thing the U.S. can do is become a model of sustainability, get our own house in order and stabilize our population.” We can’t do that with our “maximum immigration” policy, he says. Indeed, Hispanics are the country’s fastest growing ethnic group, and an estimated 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants (of all nationalities) currently live in the U.S. Of that, Mexicans make up 57% of the undocumented total. Which means about 6 percent of Mexico’s population lives in the U.S. Let’s just repeat that, shall we? 6 percent of Mexico lives in the U.S.

Lamm goes beyond the population argument, though, and adopts much of the same rhetoric as other immigration restrictionists. He concedes that the “strength and social unity of America has been the melting pot” but goes on to say that the new immigrants aren’t melting — or assimilating — adequately or quickly enough. (Sociologists we spoke to vehemently disagreed with this, pointing out that, historically, European immigrants to the U.S. took at least a generation or two before assimilation was complete).

Lamm also rejects the argument from free-trade economists that, without a strong flow of immigrants, our labor pool would dry up, our economy would falter, and many businesses would simply move overseas.

That’s “horseshit” says Lamm. And in his arguments, he’s able to both bash immigration and stay on his traditionally left-leaning platform. “You want a tight labor market,” he says, recommending that strapped employers should go into the ghettoes and draw from the country’s own poor, not Mexico’s. Then he decries the “coalition between cheap labor business and open border liberals.”

Lamm’s points bring up some interesting questions, such as: What would happen if the U.S. were actually able to seal its southern border? Would the economic and population pressures that build up in Mexico combine to create a revolution that would lead to political and economic reform? Would it create enough economic pressure on U.S. corporations to force them to move their manufacturing facilities to Mexico, and perhaps pay a living wage? Or would Mexico’s population simply continue to grow, creating its own overpopulation problems, while the U.S. continued to enjoy unprecedented prosperity and consumerism?

The questions may be irrelevant. It’s difficult to imagine ever successfully sealing the borders. Politically it wouldn’t work — the corporate lobby in the U.S. has enough power to keep the flow of immigrants coming. And the forces pushing the immigrants are also powerful enough that a wall and barbedwire and Border Patrol agents are unlikely to stop them.

Besides, the same forces that have fueled immigration may actually slow it down in the next generation. While Mexican men have flocked from the farms to the U.S. since NAFTA was implemented, the women have gone to work in the maquiladores, or factories (another NAFTA product). That means Mexican women are having far fewer children than they did a generation ago. Next generation’s labor force will be significantly smaller, as a result.

To read more about the population/immigration debate, check out this article in the Christian Science Monitor.

In case you were in doubt, it’s now official: The energy boom is underway. Wyoming’s oil and gas drills now number 106, the highest number of them since 1985. Meanwhile, the state has issued 3,200 drilling permits so far this year. That’s actually down from last year’s number of 4,050, but permit writers are still having a tough time keeping up.

And maybe that new sense of urgency and haste is fueling Wyoming’s meth craze. Republican Gubernatorial candidate Ray Hunkins said that his state’s meth epidemic has gone beyond crisis stage, and pledged to create a meth czar position on his cabinet if he is elected.

Obviously, meth doesn’t just infest gas drilling regions, but it sure provides a good way to make it through an 18-hour shift. (HCN: Methamphetamine fuels the West’s oil and gas boom)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

To this observer, when environmental groups openly quarrel with each other, it’s often healthy. It reveals how the movement is in fact very diverse, barely containing many different viewpoints and personalities. It sends a message to the general public, you can disagree with some enviros, while agreeing with others. It makes environmentalism overall more palatable, and breaks down stereotypes.

So let’s hear it for the inter-green mud wrestling in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in southwest Montana.

On one side, the Montana Wilderness Association, the National Wildlife Federation, and Trout Unlimited have dared to take a compromise position. They cut a deal with five logging companies. The terms: designate 573,000 acres of wilderness and let the loggers do their thing on 716,000 acres. The logging would be “stewardship contracts,” at least partly aimed at improving the forest condition. That’s according to the dealmakers.

On the other side, a bunch of smaller, hardline groups call it a terrible betrayal, because some of the logging would be in currently roadless areas. They’ve run ads in local newspapers, hurling insults at the dealmakers:

“Green Scammers: Behind closed doors, self-appointed interlopers sold out your Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest!”

One dealmaker, Bruce Farling, who is head of the Montana chapter of Trout Unlimited, fires back:

“The groups who’re criticizing us are so marginalized that they’re just getting more people to support us.”

The alternative weekly Missoula Independent has the best summation of the enviro politics. The daily Missoulian kind of broke the story, with lots of good facts, but less of the inside-the-movement argument. That’s where the mainstream press often lives, not only on the sidelines, but also looking the other way.

And in the As Usual Department, the U.S. Forest Service lags behind everyone else. The deal isn’t binding unless the agency incorporates it into a dreaded forest plan, and right now, the feds are trying to figure out how to react.

“It’s never too late for good ideas,” John Gatchell, the key negotiator for the Montana Wilderness Association, tells the Missoula Independent. Gatchell not only floats wise-sounding political quips, he’s also been the Wilderness Association’s point man on a series of deals with snowmobile groups. High Country News, a frequent dissector of enviro-politics, summed up those deals. The National Wildlife Federation has also taken a moderate stance on wolf politics, which HCN covered with an in-depth story and dueling opinion columns here and here.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Coal-burning power plants make half the nation’s electricity, but to many of us, they resemble dinosaurs that refuse to die. That’s because they’re the dirtiest method of generating electricity. That’s true even for the newer coal plants that boast of having “supercritical” boilers and “circulating fluidized beds” and “activated carbon injection.” They all come down to burning pulverized coal — a process that typically emits mercury compounds, heavy metals, global warming gases and other pollutants.

Yet proposals for new pulverized-coal plants continue to advance around the West, often against local opposition.

“Apathy is not an option,” says Ken Stevens, a resident of Utah’s rural Sevier County. He’s definitely not apathetic about a Nevada company’s plan to build a coal plant in his county, about 150 miles west of Moab. This coal plant would have a 460-foot-tall smokestack, and many locals like Stevens think it would “ruin the community’s farmland character and sully the skies,” according the Salt Lake Tribune. At a public comment session run by the county commissioners, speakers opposed the plant “by a nearly 6-to-1 margin,” the Trib reports.

Meanwhile, Houston-based Sithe Global Power wants to build a coal plant on the Navajo reservation in northwest New Mexico, to sell electricity to cities around the Southwest. And it has support from the Navajo government, which sees the coal plant in terms of jobs and tax collections. According to the Associated Press:

“We’re scared,” said Sarah White, a member of Dooda Desert Rock Committee, a group that has been fighting the proposed plant. “We’re scared for our future generations.”

White and other critics are concerned that two existing power plants in the region already spew tons of emissions into the air, and any additional pollution would only make air quality worse.

Double meanwhile, power-generating companies in Arizona have beaten environmentalists in a court battle, so it looks like they’ll be able to tack an additional coal-burning plant onto three existing plants at Springerville, according to the Arizona Daily Star.

And in Montana, a new grass-roots group called “Coal Plant Concerned Citizens” has sprung up (what else do new grass-roots groups do?) to oppose the construction of a new coal plant in Great Falls. Bob Quinn, a guy who builds wind farms, tells the Great Falls Tribune that “a wind power plant could be built much cheaper than the proposed coal plant.” Quinn makes a good summation:

“The discussion should be ‘what kind of power plant.’”

Triple meanwhile, Wyoming has just submitted its application attempting to get huge federal subsidies to build “the world’s first zero-emissions coal-fired power plant,” according to the Associated Press.

A “zero-emissions” plant would use a true advance in technology, the IGCC process, which converts coal to a synthetic gas such as hydrogen. All sorts of interests are scrambling to get subsidies to make the technological breakthrough, the Casper Star-Tribune reports.

And as usual, High Country News helps to lead the news coverage. HCN had a recent cover story on an Idaho citizen revolt that effectively pulverized a pulverized-coal-plant proposal. The story package included profiles of nine of the rebels, including Republican politicians, farmers, and a Benedictine monk. And it explained how the West’s most muscular Republican, California’s Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is one of the heavyweights pushing for IGCC and clean-coal technology.

For more info on the battles against dirty coal plants, and the push for clean coal, check the websites of some of the leading environmental groups on these issues: Western Resource Advocates and the Montana Environmental Information Center.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Or in many cases, it’s accurate to say, NOT planning the West … recent reports indicate the difficulty:

In Arizona, a smallish city named Maricopa has somehow tripled its population in less than two years. “This affirms what we’ve been saying about explosive growth,” City Manager Rick Buss tells the Arizona Republic. Maricopa now has about 21,000 people, and the future looks even more explosive. “At least 35,000 new homes are in various stages of development,” the Republic says. “Projections call for the city to push close to 100,000 in about five years.”

Meanwhile, Idaho’s Sun Valley resort community casts its real-estate dynamite ever southward, resulting in proposals for no less than six new rural subdivisions. They would install more than 3,000 homes on more than 20,000 acres, much of which is valuable in another sense — as winter habitat for elk and deer, reports a local conservation group, Friends of Blaine County. For more info on that imminent explosion, e-mail friendsofblainecounty@gmail.com.

And Eureka, an ex-logging town in northwest Montana, will be culturally blown up by two new golf-coursed subdivisions, mostly to create second-homes for affluent Canadians. The developers are from out of town (Canada and Florida), and they have free reign, because “there’s no zoning, no land-use restrictions, no way really to tell a developer ‘no,’” reports the Missoulian.

Yet the Missoulian’s reporter, Michael Jamison, has a humorous touch describing two developers facing a roomful of locals:

It was a scene straight out of central casting. The locals always in flannel, the developers always tanned white men with gray hair and thin mustaches, boots just a bit too shiny, jeans just a little too crisp.

Of course, the upscale developments around Eureka will have romantic names — Indian Springs, and the Wilderness Club, where starter cabins will run $700,000, reports The Daily Inter Lake.

But the perceptive reporter, Jamison, discovers reasons for Eureka’s residents to be optimistic — reasons that could surface in other struggling Old West towns:

Not so many months ago, the local lumber mill closed, putting nearly 100 people out of work. More than a few saw the shutdown as the beginning of the end. … (Yet today) downtown is vibrant and alive, funky even, if not downright hip. It is not, by any measure, what you would expect of a timber town on the ropes.

“I don’t know anybody who’s out of work who wants work,” said Realtor Terry Comstock. “If you want a job, you can paint houses, or do drywall, or hammer nails. The subcontractor business here is huge.”

… Chris Neill, a local cabinetmaker and builder, agreed that he and other contractors simply cannot find enough people who want to do the work of building Eureka.

“Logging’s not dead here,” Comstock said. “It never will be. But it’s not the future. Learn to be a builder, learn a trade and a craft. There’s more than enough work. These guys who make the switch are going to earn a whole lot more money than they ever did at the mill.”

Jamison also discovers a local café makes a profit on selling “Realtors” — designer ham sandwiches whimsically named for the town’s “new mascot.”

Nationwide, hard statistics reinforce the anecdotes: The National Association of Realtors just released a survey of the 2005 action, and finds that sales of second homes set an all-time record.

In all, four of every 10 homes sold in 2005 were second homes (either vacation homes or investors’ plays), report the Realtors.

Looking ahead, the Realtors’ chief economist, David Lereah, says second-home sales will continue to increase, because waves of Baby Boomers are looking to retire and they have money to make “that kind of a lifestyle purchase.”

High Country News chronicled the real-estate frenzy in some more surprising towns — including Silver City, New Mexico, and Jarbidge, Nevada, in its March 20 issue. HCN also summed up some of the dynamics driving the frenzy, and the throngs of real-estate agents. Then HCN readers responded with lively criticism of HCN, again and again.

From a politics perspective, this must have been too good a pinata for Bush to pass up, but I’m still thrilled about it:

Richies from Nantucket were fighting the dread effects of a coastal windfarm. Led by Democratic Senator Kennedy, they managed to kill the project with a sneaky provision attached to a Coast Guard funding bill. But now, in either a) a show of love for renewable energy or b) a show of savvy in tweaking its traditional environmental foes, the Bush Administration has spoken in support of the project and is looking for ways to thwart Kennedy.
From the Boston Globe:

In a strongly worded letter dated Thursday, Under Secretary of Energy David K. Garman called the measure backed by US Senator Edward M. Kennedy unwise and said it could threaten future renewable energy projects that the administration hopes to foster.

”More broadly, singling out wind generation in this manner could have a chilling impact on the continued investment and growth of this promising renewable energy resource,” Garman wrote to the House and Senate chairmen of the committees involved with the legislation.

Sometimes, partisan politics can have a good result. Not often. But sometimes. And for a day, at least, Bush can be a real green hero.

What you don’t know can’t hurt you, right? The Environmental Protection Agency would now like to reduce its Toxics Release Inventory reporting for power plants, factories, mines, etc.

http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/3397/1/439

In one of my other incarnations I’m a science fiction writer. And as a sci-fi writer I’ve been troubled by the field’s fetishization of a technology that is largely irrelevant to current global concerns: spaceflight.

I yawned when the X Prize for reusable spaceflight was announced, and later won by SpaceShipOne. It seemed like a waste of both resources and innovative energy. With so many problems on planet, it seemed bizarre to spend our time focusing on technologies that mostly result in Richard Branson turning bullish on the future of high-altitude tourism.

And that’s why I’m so pleased with the new X Prize. The challenge: to build a mass-produced car that gets 250 miles to the gallon. Forget wimpy CAFE standards. Go for broke. Go for an obscenely efficient car. From the Christian Science Monitor:

When the X-Prize Foundation unveils its new high-mileage car contest later this year, it will join a small but growing number of competitive prizes for energy development. Instead of watching President Bush and Congress wrangle for months to just get Detroit to boost fuel efficiency by a few miles per gallon, why not offer fat cash prizes to the private sector for breakthrough technologies? Proponents say it’s a cheaper and faster way to unhook America from its oil dependency.

It’s nice to see a shift in techno-geek focus away from the traditional fetishes of personal mobile devices, iPods, and spaceships. Finally, a sci-fi idea that’s interesting.