I’ve been working for the paper on a piece about Aldo Leopold’s years in Albuquerque. It’s a setup for a conference next month, and an excuse to explore some of the issues Leopold’s legacy raises for use living in the desert Southwest today. Here’s a snapshot, from a walk around the University of New Mexico …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere, Aldo Leopold Edition’ »
If OPEC priced its oil based on how much it costs to get it out of the ground, we’d be swimming in it right now. Or, more precisely, we would have been swimming in it, until we used it all up. The peak would have come long ago. When the market prices oil, the cost …
The rush to get in permit applications for brackish water drilling in New Mexico continues, as the state legislature considers a bill that would give the state regulatory authority. Staci Matlock reports in today’s New Mexican on more applications: Private interests are rushing to tap lightly regulated supplies of briny water deep under New Mexico …
Around the corner from my house, something truly strange is under construction. It looks kinda like the Alamo, albeit with tilt-up concrete sides and weird tubes coming out the sides. It’s our new “water park,” which has been haltingly under construction for ages. It’s part of a hotel up the street from my house, an …
Continue reading ‘Water In the Desert: Surrealism Edition’ »
Win Quigley, from the front page of yesterday’s Journal, on the way New Mexico chooses to implement the Hartwick rule: New Mexico has amassed billions of dollars over the almost 100 years that we’ve been a state, mostly from oil and natural gas extraction, that is hoarded in rainy-day funds. The idea is that when …
Discussing federal stimulus spending yesterday, a colleague and I were pondering how the New Mexico economy might go about absorbing the money the feds want to pump into it. One key question is the availability of a work force with the skills to build stuff. Some numbers, courtesy St. Louis Fed. The drop from the …
Tedious but necessary explanation of Navajo-Gallup water project funding mechanism.
Worked some Yergin and Hartwick into a piece for this morning’s paper on the regulatory framework (or lack thereof) surrounding deep brackish groundwater in New Mexico: Water is not oil, but there are similarities in the politics and policies that accompany our consumption of the two precious liquids. Using groundwater, which is almost never replaced …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Brackish Water and “Sustainability”’ »
Transaction costs of brackish water regulation
Drier Climate on the Way for Southwest (ad gated): Climate change is increasing the chances of severe and persistent drought in the Southwest, according to a new report from a panel of federal scientists. “It’s going to get drier,” said Richard Seager, a climate researcher at Columbia University in New York. That means diminished water …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Water in the Desert Edition’ »