A uranium mine near the Grand Canyon's North Rim. Photo: Don Bills, USGS.

At the beginning of the last century, Ralph H. Cameron was a booster of the Grand Canyon. He wanted to promote – and cash in on - the Canyon as a tourist destination. He helped expand Bright Angel Trail, now one of the most popular trails into the Canyon from the South Rim.  But at a price; he charged a toll to visitors.

A chunk of oil shale-bearing rock. Try burning this in your gas tank. (Dept. of Interior photo.)

Getting energy from oil shale is a half-baked idea.  Literally.

Oil shale, also known as kerogen, is a waxy pre-petroleum substance found in rock layers in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.  Unlike pools of oil in the ground, it can't be turned into liquid fuel for transportation unless it's baked to 700 degrees.  And no company in the U.S. has been able to develop a process that turns it into oil in a way that actually makes money, despite a century of trying.  No wonder oil shale has been mocked as the "fuel of the future - because it always has been, and always will be."

Because of the technological and economic challenges, oil shale is putting as much liquid fuel into U.S. markets as it did in the early 1900s.  Which is to say:  zero.

Grand Canyon National Park. As compared to doing nothing, the 20-year withdrawal will reduce impacts to wildlife habitat by two-thirds.

About a century ago, a Republican president said:

In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.

Teddy Roosevelt was right then. And President Obama was right last Monday to take action to prevent uncontrolled uranium mining from marring streams, wildlife habitat and archeological sites across a million acres of public land next to the Grand Canyon.

Obama’s Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, signed an order withdrawing the million acres from hard rock mining claims for 20 years. Numerous editorials, including in the LA Times and Arizona Republic, applauded the move, as did long-time supporters of the ban, including local and national conservation groups and Indian tribes whose ancestral lands have now been protected for two decades.

It was the type of bold action we’d love to see more of from this administration.

Aerial view of the Alton coal strip mine near Bryce Canyon. Photo (c) Ray Bloxham, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

As fall turns to winter, President Obama has continued his virtually unbroken streak of bending over backwards for the coal industry in the West.  For those who love Western public lands and could do without more subsidies to Big Coal, Mr. Obama has been more Grinch than Santa.

For example, the Forest Service recently consented to a coal lease in western Colorado that will result in more than two square miles of the beautiful Sunset Trail Roadless Area being chewed up with 48 well pads and 6.5 miles of road.  It’s a Christmas present to corporate goliath Arch Coal, and coal in the public’s stocking.

But wait, there’s more! BLM is moving ahead with plans to approve a strip mine on the doorstep of Bryce Canyon National Park.  Denuded habitat, truck trips that will disrupt tourism and the lives of local residents, and dust will all result.  Not everyone is wild about the idea - including the Salt Lake Tribune, which editorialized against the project.  (And if you're not wild about the strip mine either, go here to tell the BLM.) 

Vermillion Basin, Colorado. One of the few places off-limits to drilling. Photo © Mark Pearson

Let’s say you have three kids, and one big piece of cake to divide amongst them. One kicks and cries and whines. "I want it ALL," the baby screams. "I want it all NOW!" The other two say, "We want our fair share."

To keep the decibel level in the house at acceptable levels, and because you’re a whimp, you give the crybaby 90 percent of the cake. But even that doesn’t work. The baby still whines and cries and kicks and screams, "I want it ALL. I don’t care what brother and sister get."

Meet the oil and gas industry in Colorado, the crybaby of the West's public lands debate.

A hillside bulldozed for a coal mine methane drainage well, western Colorado. Photo By Ted Zukoski

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper took a feel-good tour of a Colorado coal mine this week, bolstering his corporate-friendly cred in the southern part of the state.

He talked about how great it was that the mine could co-exist with wildlife, and joked about the high-paying jobs. And for all of you self-serving Prius owners who call coal by its other name—One Of The Dirtiest Fuels On The Planet ™—Hickenlooper wanted to remind you:

"We all use electricity, we all drive vehicles so we have to play our role in getting the energy, whether it's coal or natural gas. We all have to figure out how to get it safely and efficiently and in a way that it benefits the community around it. That's what they are trying to do here."

Music to the ears of those running the New Elk Mine, the subject of the tour, which is digging out metallurgic coal in an area that has seen mining for decades. And you have to appreciate job creation in tough economic times. But Hickenlooper omitted some interesting facts about the New Elk Mine. For example:

Can you tell which side shows the smoggy day at the Grand Canyon? NPS photo.

Our National Park system—the first in the world—has been dubbed "America's best idea." But that great idea, which offers millions a respite from our industrialized life, is now beseiged more than ever by a symptom of that life—smog.

The National Parks Conservation Association published a report last week showing that the number of bad ozone (smog) days in national parks has risen over the last three years. Flagship parks like Great Smoky Mountains, Rocky Mountain National Park, Grand Canyon, and Big Bend all had ozone violations over the last six months. Sequioa/Kings Canyon National Park suffered the worst—choking on smog for more than two months.

Smog is bad for the Parks—obscuring famous and magnificent views and depositing pollutants that foul lakes and streams.

But it's not so good for the visitors either, since its tied to all sorts of lung and heart disease. High enough ozone levels trigger recommendations for people to stay indoors and limit outdoor exercise, which kind of ruins the whole national park experience.

A road and well pad bulldozed into roadless lands for a coal mine in Colorado. Ted Zukoski photo.

The Environmental Protection Agency found much room for improvement when it weighed in on the Forest's Service environmental impact statement that analyzes a proposed rule to weaken protection for roadless lands in Colorado. 

Among the EPA's concerns: the Forest Service proposed to grant the highest level of protection to about one-seventh of Colorado's 4 million acres of roadless lands. Not enough, said the EPA in its July 18 letter.

Further, the EPA said the proposal would allow three coal mines to bulldoze roads through roadless lands to get hundreds of millions of tons of additional coal.

Grand Wash, in the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument. Photo (c) Kim Crumbo.

Late in his administration, Bill Clinton attempted to build a conservation legacy worthy of Teddy Roosevelt by designating more than a dozen national monuments across the West.

George W. Bush tried to undo that legacy.

And President Barack Obama, to his dis-credit, has allowed the Bush-adopted, monument-undercutting status quo to remain, despite being the "hope-y, change-y" candidate in 2008.

But a little more background.

Hummingbird at larkspur. David Inouye photo.

One of the great joys of living in the Rockies is taking a summer stroll in a high meadow, surrounded by wildflowers - violet lupines, deep red skyrockets, purple larkspur, penstemons, 6-foot gentians, and many others.

Some of these diplays may be changing, however, according to a scientific article written up recently in the LA Times.  The study shows that the previous "peak" of flowers in the mid-summer is being stretched out.  As the biology geeks put it in the article: