Lisa Jones’s Posts

• The Methane of Their Existence

  Citizens battle to keep Delta County from becoming the coal bed methane capital of Colorado 0

  Posted 7 years, 5 months ago

  It started out as a simple item on a regional planning commission agenda in remote Delta County, Colo.

  

  A recently reworked natural gas well in Delta County.

  Photo: Jeremy Puckett, WSERC.

  But since that meeting on April 9, the possibility that up to 600 coal bed methane wells could be drilled here has whipped up a firestorm of dissent in this quiet western Colorado valley. It has flushed hundreds of ranchers, fruit farmers, housewives, realtors, and environmentalists to public hearings, where they speak out against an economic, social, and environmental threat… Read More

• A Tale of Two Mayors

  The improbable story of how Bogota, Colombia, became somewhere you might actually want to live 0

  Posted 7 years, 7 months ago

  "We had to build a city not for businesses or automobiles, but for children and thus for people," said a man in a speech last year. "Instead of building highways, we restricted car use. ... We invested in high-quality sidewalks, pedestrian streets, parks, bicycle paths, libraries; we got rid of thousands of cluttering commercial signs and planted trees. ... All our everyday efforts have one objective: Happiness."

  

  Enrique Penalosa (on left).

  Photo: Institute for Transportation and
  Development Policy.

  Did the voters of Boulder, Colo. write in the Dalai Lama as… Read More

• What a Beauty!

  Navajo pageant winner is an enviro star 0

  Posted 8 years, 9 months ago

  Outfitted in moccasins and traditional dresses, the four contestants in the 49th Miss Navajo Nation Pageant -- held this past September in Window Rock, Ariz. -- demonstrated a dazzling array of cultural skills. They discussed, in Navajo, the Treaty of 1868. They carded and spun wool, and they displayed rugs they had woven. They prepared fry bread from scratch over an open fire of their own making. Just about the only things the contestants didn't do were to butcher sheep (that popular event was cancelled this year) and to exhibit their bodies in bikinis and evening gowns.

  Read More

• Cabbage Patch Kid

  One man taxes his way to a healthy relationship with the earth 0

  Posted 9 years ago

  Dev Carey is a tall, handsome man with a Ph.D. in ecology. He can swing dance like a pro, identify every plant in the meadow outside his house, and talk nervous youths into rappelling off cliffs. He can do many things, but one thing he can't do is separate himself from the morality of any given situation. Especially the environmental morality of any given situation.

  

  Dev Carey, flower child.

  Photo: Lisa Jones.

  This is something of a curse. Like Cassandra in Greek mythology, he stares unblinking at the writing on the… Read More

• Mr. Green Beans

  He's all abuzz about socially responsible coffee 0

  Posted 9 years, 3 months ago

  I am in the local coffee shop in Paonia, Colo., drinking a cup of joe and pleasantly anticipating its effects on my brain. My companion, Eli Wolcott, isn't drinking a drop. He doesn't ask what coffee can do for him; he asks what he can do for coffee.

  

  Eli Wolcott (the mug's just a prop).

  Photo: Lisa Jones.

  Specifically, Eli wonders whether he can help coffee workers in the remote hills of southern Mexico improve their quality of life and cause less environmental damage. He's working with them to revamp their… Read More

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