Energy in the West

These days, energy, environment, foreign policy and climate change issues collide in often surprising ways. In the western United States, long seen as a sort of energy colony for the rest of the country, the effects of increased domestic energy exploration continues to reverberate around the region. The Bush administration freed federal agencies to accelerate domestic production, especially in the Western United States, while virtually ignoring the costs to air and water quality, wildlife habitat, and the health effects on rural Westerners. Whether it’s the resurgence of uranium production or the discovery of new ways to extract natural gas from deep coal seams, the effects of this energy drive is being felt acutely in small communities around the West.

Click here to hear the voices of people from New Mexico to Wyoming whose lives have been transformed by this single-minded rush to drill in some of the country’s widest open spaces.

Featured as a “Web exclusive” to accompany Audubon magazine’s September-October 2008 cover story, “Running on Empty,” written by The Story Group’s Daniel Glick.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 2nd, 2011 at 6:45 pm. It is filed under Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.