Carbon (Spin) Cycle

We’ve got a lot of dead trees in the Rockies. More than usual. As the region has warmed, bark beetle populations have exploded, and they’ve been killing off massive swaths of pine and spruce. It’s hard to miss the damage, and when British landscape artist Chris Drury visited the University of Wyoming campus in Laramie, [...]

The Flaming Teapot Dilemma

 Earlier this year, during a reporting trip in West Virginia, I happened upon the tiny Watts Museum, a mining-history gallery tucked into West Virginia University’s sprawling Mineral Resources building. Its advertised exhibit, “Defying the Darkness,” detailed the history of mine illumination. Mine illumination? I pictured engineering blueprints and exhibit cases filled with switches and bulbs. [...]