Despite a hostile administration, local governments in the West recognize the need to
continue the energy transition, and they have plans.
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Montana’s ag tax slashes bills for thousands of million-dollar homes
Properties classified ‘agricultural’ get a tax break despite no bona fide operations. Can lawmakers’ new proposals tighten qualifications?
Who voted in the 2024 election?
Many Democrats stayed home, while independents swung to the right.
2024 was a year of wacky Western weather
When assessing the region, not much was normal but climate change.
How the climate is changing your energy bill
Wildfires and winter storms are costing utilities and families.
The downballot issues driving the West’s 2024 elections
From climate and public lands to shifting political allegiances, the region faces critical choices at the ballot box.
What happens when a concrete jungle becomes a ‘sponge city’
Engineering for flood resilience can address storms heightened by climate change.
Get to know the western bumblebee
Bombus occidentalis may soon be the West’s new face for insect conservation.
The inequity of heat
Extreme heat doesn’t discriminate; the ability to escape it does.
Abandoned mines cover the West
Their legacy is destruction and pollution of lands and waters.
Water inequality on the Colorado River
A new accounting reveals deep disparities in Western water consumption.
The West remains cattle country
Livestock has indelibly altered the region’s land, water and air.
The great solar build-out
Public-land managers ponder where to allow utility-scale solar projects
What’s going on with natural gas exports?
The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of LNG, but President Biden just paused new permits.
Disaster disparities in the West
The risk of climate catastrophe is complex, but people of color often face ‘unnatural hazards.’
The West’s hazardous highways
America’s car culture kills people
and wrecks communities.
12 not-so-easy steps to decarbonize the grid
Electrifying will make a difference if that power comes from clean sources.
The Endangered Species Act by the numbers
Half a century of wins and losses.
New legislation is creating a clean-energy project pulse
Will the manufacturing renaissance finally displace fossil fuels?
Who owns the West?
Increasingly, land is shifting into the hands of billionaires.