Hal Clifford’s Posts

• You Cruise, You Lose

  Hal Clifford reviews Cruise Ship Blues by Ross Klein 0

  Posted 6 years, 5 months ago

  For all intents and purposes, during the summer, it is the 45,000 people found on the dozens of cruise ships that ply that state's southeastern coastal waters. And the effects of that "city" on the natural environment are indeed urban, in the worst imaginable ways.

• Better Living Through French Fries

  Is biodiesel the fuel of the future? 1

  Posted 7 years, 2 months ago

  The Granola Ayatollah of Canola, aka Charris Ford, slides behind the wheel of his 1980 International Scout truck and turns the key. The truck burbles to life and off we go, cruising down the gravel roads that divide the aspen groves of southwestern Colorado's Horsefly Mesa. It would be just a standard evening joyride, except that Ford's truck doesn't run on gasoline. Or diesel. Or electricity, or even the sun. This truck is powered by grease, all of it drained from restaurant deep-fryers in the nearby resort town of Telluride.

  

  The Granola Ayatollah… Read More

• Rocky Mountain High Tax

  Aspen, Colo., taxes its way to a healthier climate 0

  Posted 7 years, 3 months ago

  Randy Udall charges more for a ton of carbon dioxide than anybody else in the world.

  Udall runs a unique, two-and-a-half-year-old program in Aspen and surrounding Pitkin County, Colo., that charges new homeowners up to $100,000 if they exceed the "energy budget" allotted to their property by the local building code. The money collected under the Renewable Energy Mitigation Program is invested by Udall in energy efficiency and renewable-energy projects.

  REMP's goal is to keep three tons of carbon out of the air for every excess ton of carbon spewed on behalf of profligate new homeowners in Aspen. People can… Read More

• Better, By Design

  A review of Cradle to Cradle 0

  Posted 7 years, 3 months ago

  The idea that growth can be good is anathema to most environmentalists. Yet that's exactly the argument made by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in Cradle to Cradle. Take a look at nature, the pair says, and you'll see that growth is not only good, but necessary -- that nature's very abundance is what environmentalists (and the rest of us) depend on and celebrate. The key is the right kind of growth -- and the key to that is better design.

• Methane to Their Madness

  Coal bed methane extraction threatens Wyoming's Red Desert 0

  Posted 7 years, 10 months ago

  OREGON BUTTES, Wyo. Tom Bell remembers how plush the carpet was in Interior Secretary Stewart Udall's Washington, D.C., office. Bell spent time on his hands and knees there during the 1960s, poring over a large map while making the case for preserving Wyoming's Red Desert as a national pronghorn antelope refuge.

  

  The Pinnacles in the Red Desert.

  Photo: Erik Molvar, Biodiversity Associates.

  Udall liked the idea, but encountered a Wyoming congressional delegation that didn't. More than 30 years later, Bell, a World War II veteran who founded both High Country News… Read More

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