Category Archives: Southwest

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Arizona (River) Highways

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

— Henry David Thoreau

I moved to Arizona eleven years ago in search of wildness. I came from Iowa, the most successful state in the Union at eliminating wild lands. A majority of Iowa was once covered by prairie, a rich grassland ecosystem that was home to bison, prairie chickens, elk, bears, mountain lions, wolves, and even river otters. All that was dismantled — or 99.9 percent of it, anyway — to make way for row crops, mostly corn and soybeans. Iowa became a wilderness sacrifice area.

Yellow warbler, San Pedro River (Photo courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management).

The fact that so much of Arizona remains wild has nothing to do with any ecologically-minded superiority of its inhabitant, of course. Mostly, Arizona has been blessed with a lack of water. The Sonoran desert is still host to so much of its original wildlife simply because, with few exceptions, the European migration (or “invasion,” to most native peoples) that began in the early 16th century found the desert inhospitable, or more accurately, unprofitable.

Riparian areas — the interface between land and water — are home to countless species of plants and animals in the arid Southwest, most noticeably to birds that either live there permanently or travel along them. For much of the wildlife here, rivers are the true Arizona highways.

Profiled in the video below, the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in southeastern Arizona is one of the richest protected areas of its kind in the state. (Map, PDF)

To learn more about the SPRNCA, and efforts to protect it, visit the website of the Friends of the San Pedro River.

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Renewable Energy Under Attack in Two Dozen States

Recent attacks on state support for renewable energy in solar-rich Arizona are part of a nationwide trend.

Solar panels cover the roof of a parking garage at Arizona State University in Tempe. (Photo by Osha Gray Davidson)

At InsideClimate News today, Maria Gallucci writes:

Over the past few years, a rising tide of legislation has sought to repeal or weaken renewable portfolio standards RPS, which require a certain share of a state’s electricity supply to come from sources like solar and wind. Lesser known are the few lawsuits filed to challenge the constitutionality of these laws.

Many of these attempts have fizzled, but some are being revived this year. In total, 42 efforts are wending their way through legislatures and courts in more than two dozen states, according to the North Carolina Solar Center, a clearinghouse for state renewable energy policies.

“The danger of some of these [RPS laws] being repealed is a little bit greater this year than it was last year,” said Justin Barnes, a senior policy analyst at the center.”

While Republicans are behind most of these anti-renewable attacks (unsurprisingly), Gallucci points to a more specific source.

The biggest push is coming from the American Legislative Exchange Council ALEC, a 40-year-old industry group with free-market views that drafts and pushes legislation and that sees renewable energy mandates as an overreach of government authority.

via Renewable Energy Standards Target of Multi-Pronged Attack | InsideClimate News.

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Mexican Drug Gangs Profit From Fossil Fuel Addiction

In his 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush declared, “Here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.”

What President Bush didn’t say — although it was just as true — is that America is addicted to other fossil fuels, such as natural gas and coal. In fact, the three countries that together contain 84 percent of North America’s population are all fossil fuel junkies. The battle over the Keystone XL pipeline has highlighted the Canadian-U.S. carbon habit, but information about Mexico’s energy battles rarely make the news here in the States. Most stories on Mexico focus on that country’s non-metaphorical drug problems.

Over at Living on Earth, there’s an interview about the surprising (to me, anyway) link between both of these addictions — to fossil fuel and to illegal drugs.

Here’s the introduction. Follow the link below to listen to the full interview.

The state of Coahuila borders Texas and produces 95% of Mexico’s coal. (Image: Google Maps)

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Steve Curwood. Illicit drugs are a wildly lucrative business for many gangs in Mexico. But at least one cartel, the Zetas Gang, has found something even more profitable - coal mining. The state of Coahuila borders Texas and produces 95 percent of Mexico’s coal. It’s also ground zero for Mexican drug cartels turned coal barons. That’s according to a recent article in Al Jazeera, written by reporter John Holman, who joins us by phone from the roadside in Mexico. John, Welcome to Living on Earth.

HOLMAN: Hello!

CURWOOD: So how is it possible that mining for coal can be more profitable than selling illegal drugs?

HOLMAN: Well one of the big things is that in Coahuila there lots of small clandestine mines called pothos. And these sorts of mines that have very little regulation - and so obviously they can have bigger turnover from gangs like the Zetas gang - and obviously miners in that state not usually very highly trained and poorly paid - so that’s another reason they could earn a lot of money from it.

CURWOOD: So these are small little clandestine mines on the side of the roads that people are working.

HOLMAN: Yes, obviously Coahuila also has its share of bigger mines; as you said, it’s responsible for 95 percent of Mexico’s coal output. These small mines as you drive through Coahuila - as I did - and you can see them on the side of the roads in the coal district. And they’re literally just some men gathered around what looks a very ropey sort of machine to lower them down into the depths of the earth and bring up that coal.

CURWOOD: So walk me through this process. Who buys this coal from the drug cartels?

via Living on Earth: Mexican Drug Gangs Turn To Coal Mining.