CLEANUP CREWS EXPLOITED | WATER CONSERVATION = FEWER OWLS | SPORTSMEN GAIN INFLUENCE High Country ForN people whoews care about the West WHAT KILLED WASHINGTON’S CARBON TAX? And what does it say about the future? By Kate Schimel January 21, 2019 | $5 | Vol. 51 No. 1 | www.hcn.org No. 51 | $5 Vol. 2019 January 21, CONTENTS Editor’s note The greatest of apes We are at a strange moment in history. On the one hand, a sizable percentage of Americans do not believe in human-caused climate change, as though facts can be rejected at will. On the other hand, people who do understand the implications of a warming planet seem incapable of doing much about it. Our politics will not allow it: Conservatives continually block climate change legislation, while liberals have done little to prioritize it. And yet, the future lurks ahead of us, promising a warmer world, where crops shift, seas rise and species die out. We humans, being such intelligent apes, will probably survive, and I suppose there’s some comfort in that. But it’s worth asking, at this moment, what is stopping climate action? During the 2018 midterms, the state of Washington was asked to vote on a fee that would have curbed emissions of carbon dioxide, the tricky little molecule that puffs from smokestacks and car exhaust and traps the sun’s Washington Gov. Jay Inslee speaks with people last June as he helps to gather signatures for a carbon tax energy in the atmosphere, creating the “greenhouse initiative. Voters in Washington state went on to reject the measure. PHUONG LE/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS effect.” As Associate Editor Kate Schimel reports in this issue’s cover story, the fee — seen by many as a FEATURE tax — failed. The question is: Why? Like a detective On the cover 14 What Killed Washington’s Carbon Tax? in a noir mystery, Schimel goes in search of Initiative The sun rises behind And what does it say about the future? By Kate Schimel 1631’s killer, examining the usual suspects — the the Space Needle in oil and gas lobby, for example — and seeking clues downtown Seattle, CURRENTS among researchers, policymakers and activists. What as seen last August emerges is a terrible plot twist: The culprit (spoiler through smoky skies 5 After natural disasters, workers face exploitation Immigrant alert) is us. created by wildfires laborers are especially vulnerable to health risks and wage theft in the Cascade Homo sapiens are the greatest of apes, and we Mountains and 5 The Latest: New research confirms snowpack changes have mastered the art of survival. Our eyes evolved British Columbia. 6 Can the tiny raptors to scan the savanna for predators, our hands to SIGMA SREEDHARAN Water savings may hurt burrowing owls adapt to changes in California’s warming fields? make stone tools and field-butcher carrion. Our language helped us learn from our mistakes, to tell 7 The Latest: Drilling push in ANWR complicated stories by firelight. We developed our 8 Indigenous podcasts elevate true crime First Nations reporters minds and leaped from an agricultural revolution reinvent a common formula to an industrial one. We’ve made amazing 10 Sportsmen flex their political muscles In the midterms, discoveries and invented complex systems, such as public land access issues helped several candidates nab governorships capitalism, to organize millions of people under tribal ideologies. But somewhere along the way, we DEPARTMENTS became the agents of our own undoing. The death of Washington’s carbon tax teaches 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG us a tough lesson: We have not yet learned to 4 LETTERS survive ourselves. For all our smarts, we are still dumb animals, unable to properly imagine the 12 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends threats of the future, unable to act. The last great Complete access to subscriber-only 12 MARKETPLACE lesson we must learn, then, is how to outsmart content 24 BOOKS ourselves. We must begin an ecological revolution, to find a way of being in the world that does not HCN’s website Extreme Conservation: Life at the Edges of the World by Joel Berger hcn.org utterly consume it. Our politics, our policies, our Reviewed by Michael Engelhard Digital edition habits, rituals, beliefs — all the stories that we tell hcne.ws/digi-5101 25 ESSAY ourselves — these must be realigned if the world The howl of an iconic wolf By Jacob Job as we know it is to survive us. It won’t be easy, and Follow us 27 PERSPECTIVE there will be casualties, like Initiative 1631. But that Cutting carbon requires both innovation and regulation does not mean we should give up. The time to act is By Jonathan Thompson now. It always will be. @highcountrynews 28 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston —Brian Calvert, editor-in-chief 2 High Country News January 21, 2019 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG Trump’s EPA is reluctant to Trending punish law-breaking polluters It’s a mistake Under the Trump administration, the to keep parks Environmental Protection Agency is more likely to give polluters a pass when they open during violate laws intended to keep the air the shutdown healthy and water clean, according to recent In 2016, the National reporting by the Environmental Data and Irrigating in Park Service hosted Governance Initiative, a watchdog group. 320 million visitors, Nationally, EDGI found a 38 percent drop California, which is more than all Disney in the number of orders requiring polluters parks, major league to comply with the law, and a 50 percent entitled to more Colorado River baseball, football, drop in the number of fines between 2017 basketball and soccer and 2018. The EPA acknowledges a shift in water than any other of the games and NASCAR focus from “enforcement” to “compliance.” races combined. Under That means it’s likely to work less as a seven Colorado River Basin the current government cop than as an adviser to the companies shutdown, leaving the it regulates, an approach critics say could states. “LOCO STEVE,” parks open without incentivize companies to cut corners. “It’s CC VIA FLICKR essential staff is another iteration of EPA’s industry-friendly equivalent to leaving approach,” said EDGI member Marianne How to share the Colorado River the Smithsonian open Sullivan, a public health expert at William without any staff to Paterson University. “It says we’re prioritizing To stave off catastrophic Colorado River shortages haven’t figured out how to fund it. that could leave some Western communities protect its priceless industry’s needs and desires over the health New Mexico has signed onto the drought artifacts. Yet as a result of our environment and the health of our high and dry, the seven Upper and Lower Basin contingency agreement, but state water states are close to finalizing a deal to prepare of the shutdown, which communities.” CALLY CARSWELL managers are silent about what exactly the state furloughed most park for a much drier future. As negotiations over the has agreed to do to reduce its water use. Read more online: hcne.ws/reluctant-epa so-called drought contingency plans enter their staff, this is what has final stages, here are the biggest takeaways from Arizona is holding up the basin-wide plan happened. It is a viola- each state: because it can’t agree on how and where to cut tion of the stewardship its water use. Large agricultural economies in mandate, motivated Wyoming, which has more water than it needs, central Arizona, in particular, stand to lose. only by politics. While now will keep more water than previously in the Nevada has offered to forgo about 10 percent of the majority of the Flaming Gorge Reservoir to help regulate the public will be respect- level of Lake Powell. its Colorado River allocation if there is a shortage declaration that reduces water deliveries to ful, there will always Colorado farmers are weary of sacrificing water Nevada, Arizona and California. be a few who take to prop up Lake Powell. Agricultural interests on advantage of the op- the Western Slope say they will oppose a deal In California, a battle is brewing between portunity to do lasting that forces them to use less water because they Imperial Valley agriculture and the coastal cities. damage. JONATHAN believe such contributions should be voluntary. Growers are concerned that restrictions could B. JARVIS, WRITING IN violate their historical water rights and limit their has plans to grow, and it wants more water THE GUARDIAN Utah future use. to do so. The state wants to build a massive A coal-fired power plant in Hunter, Utah. You say “ARBYREED,” CC VIA FLICKR pipeline from Lake Powell to southern Utah. State PAIGE BLANKENBUEHLER officials say the project is necessary, but they Read more online: hcne.ws/river KATHY ROSENTHAL: “The parks should have been closed to the public. There is no Photos personal responsibility anymore. Leaving Metal is the parks open is yet “disenchantment another political move : by those that have no with everything appreciation for our establishment, national treasures.” society, the NANCY GRINDSTAFF: “It’s a mistake to have frustrations you have a shutdown.” in your life, socio- HUNTER GRAHAM: economic problems, “Gotta make excep- tions though, right? family problems, Yellowstone must stay not being provided open from the north entrance at Gardiner the resources or the to Cooke City at the opportunities that northeast entrance or else locals who don’t most people are given have snow machines everyday, just because would not be able to leave Cooke in the you’re on the rez. winter. Just sayin’.” —Jerold Cecil, manager for the Navajo heavy metal band” I Don’t Read more online: Konform, discussing why the 1980s hcne.ws/parks- musical genre resonates on the Navajo Nation.