Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Jonathan Thompson
Iran War Exposes the Energy Dominance Lie
This story was originally published by High Country News. The images of towering clouds of black smoke rising from petroleum facilities in and around Tehran after U.S. and Israeli forces bomb them horrify observers who understand the toxic implications and consequences for the environment and the millions of people who live in the region.
The dismantling of the US Forest Service is imminent
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In the 1880s, giant cattle companies turned thousands of cattle out to graze on the “public domain”—i.e., the Western lands that had been stolen from Indigenous people and then opened up for white settlement. In remote southeastern Utah, this coincided with a wave of settlement by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Guest writer: Coal gets a boost as renewables are gutted
A few years back, my friend Norm told me that when he was growing up in northern New Mexico in the 1950s and early ‘60s, his family often drove up to the La Plata Mountains in southwestern Colorado. From there he could see all the way to the Sandia Mountains outside Albuquerque, some 200 miles away.
(Commentary) Jonathan Thompson: Coal gets a boost as renewables are gutted
A few years back, my friend Norm told me that when he was growing up in northern New Mexico in the 1950s and early ’60s, his family often drove up to the La Plata Mountains in southwestern Colorado. From there he could see all the way to the Sandia Mountains outside Albuquerque, some 200 miles away.
Opinion: Coal gets a boost as renewables are gutted | Jonathan Thompson
A few years back, my friend Norm told me that when he was growing up in northern New Mexico in the 1950s and early ‘60s, his family often drove up to the La Plata Mountains in southwestern Colorado. From there he could see all the way to the Sandia Mountains outside Albuquerque, some 200 miles away.
Trump gives coal a boost, guts renewables and will return haze to the Four Corners (Opinion)
A few years back, my friend Norm told me that when he was growing up in northern New Mexico in the 1950s and early ‘60s, his family often drove up to the La Plata Mountains in southwestern Colorado. From there he could see all the way to the Sandia Mountains outside Albuquerque, some 200 miles away.
This late-breaking Biden executive order could further empower the AI oligarchy
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On January 14, President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing the departments of Defense and Energy to make land available for private entities to construct gigawatt-scale “frontier” AI data centers.
Sure, Biden’s climate policy could be better, but consider what a second Trump term would be like
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Who really owns the Wild West?
This story was originally published by High Country News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Earlier this year, several Western states considered legislation that would ban or restrict foreign ownership of land, particularly agricultural parcels. While some proposed bills, including California’s, involved blanket restrictions, most sought to curtail ownership by foreign “adversaries,” mainly China, but also Iran, Venezuela and North Korea — even Saudi Arabia.
Should we worry about eight billion people?
Increases in population still result in increases in overall environmental impact. But per capita consumption plays a far bigger role. It’s runaway consumption, not unhindered population growth, that is most responsible for the habitat loss, land-use changes and resource exploitation that most threaten biodiversity and cause the runaway greenhouse gas emissions that are altering the climate. 4.7 billion Metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted from energy use in the United States in 2021.
It turns out western voters care a lot about public lands
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Ammon Bundy only got 17 percent of the votes in the Idaho governor’s race. Phew, I thought. What a relief. Then: Wait, 100,000 people voted for Ammon Bundy?
In swank Vail, resort worker housing vies with wild sheep habitat
These are rough times for the world’s wildlife and its habitat. The latest Living Planet Index shows that over the last couple of decades the number of North American vertebrate species and their populations are in decline. And according to State of the Birds 2022, our feathered friends aren’t faring so well, either: Tipping point species such as the once-abundant piñon jay and rufous hummingbird have lost half of their Western populations since the 1970s, mostly thanks to habitat loss.
The Supreme Court may be poised to blow up the Clean Water Act
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. If you want to cross the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, anytime between October and July, you probably won’t need a boat, a bridge, waders or even waterproof shoes.
Drought and demand is threatening a critical component of the Western grid
This story was originally published in High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Thirty-nine years ago, due to record-breaking snowfall in the Upper Colorado River Basin, Lake Powell rose substantially, catching river managers off-guard. By late June, the reservoir was nearly overflowing, forcing operators—for the first time ever—to rely on the spillways.
The digital world’s real-world hit on the environment
This story was originally published by High Country News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The gradual shiftof life away from the three-dimensional space to cyberspace once promised a Jetsons-style efficiency, a tidy transition from physical stuff’s environment-harming ways to a clean and impact-free digital world.
The energy-hogging, water-sucking scourge of Big Tech, visualized
Crypto miners chase cheap energy—even setting up shop on oil and gas pads to utilize methane that otherwise would be flared. This image depicts a flare mitigation center in Montana.Crusoe Energy This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
2021 was a year of "weather whiplash" in the West
A cyclist in Phoenix on Tuesday, June 15, 2021. Ross D. Franklin/AP This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Feds' nuclear-waste strategy review aims to find solutions for Canada's toxic waste
The federal government has launched a new initiative aimed at finding long-term solutions for the growing quantity of radioactive waste produced by Canada's nuclear reactors. To that end, the government wants members of the industry, the general public and Indigenous people to weigh in on the topic and potential solutions that have so far proven elusive.
The pandemic is battering oil-state economies
A capped oil well ready to start pumping near Jal, New Mexico. Roberto E. Rosales/Zuma For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters. This piece was originally published in High Country News and appears here as part of our Climate Desk Partnership. Long beforeNew Mexico or Wyoming identified any cases of COVID-19, even before residents began hoarding eggs and sacks of flour, state budgets were feeling the impact of the disease.
Nuclear power is clean - except for all the waste
This story was originally published by High Country News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration Nuclear power generateselectricity without emitting greenhouse gases or other air pollutants. Yet it hasn’t been extensively deployed to fight climate change because of safety fears, the high cost of construction and, perhaps most significantly, the hazardous waste, or spent fuel, reactors produce. Now, as the climate crisis worsens, pro-nuclear groups are speaking out.
Nuclear Power Is “Clean”-If You Ignore All the Waste
The Exelon Byron Nuclear Generating Stations running at full capacity 14 May, 2007 in Byron, Illinois. Jeff Haynes / Getty This story was originally published by the High Country News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Nuclear power generateselectricity without emitting greenhouse gases or other air pollutants.
Is nuclear energy the key to saving the planet?
This story was originally published by High Country News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Emma Redfoot stands at a whiteboard in a small conference room, sketching neutrons, protons and nuclei, her voice rising enthusiastically as she explains nuclear fission: A neutron blasted into a uranium-235 atom shatters the atom, releasing energy and yet more neutrons that split other uranium atoms, causing a frenetically energetic chain reaction.
A judge dealt a potentially fatal blow to the Keystone pipeline
Indigenous leaders and climate activists disrupt business at a Chase Bank branch in Seattle to protest funding tar sands development and projects like the Keystone XL pipeline.Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. After a slew of climate-friendly ballot initiatives went down in flames on Election Day in Arizona, Colorado, and Washington, greens needed something to cheer them up.
Indigenous activists try to quell a rising tide of oil and gas exploration in Chaco Canyon
This article was originally published by High Country News on March 1, 2018. It was republished as part of climatedesk, a journalistic collaboration dedicated to exploring the impact — human, environmental, economic and political— of a changing climate. High Country News note: On March 1, the Interior Department canceled the sale of oil and gas leases that would have impacted the Chaco Canyon area. The department received hundreds of protests of the sale, before it was cancelled.
Why the Symbolism Behind Coal Is Still So Powerful
This story was originally published by High Country News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. I saw these three words on a little sticker affixed, discordantly, to the window of a car in a small Colorado town. It struck me as funny at first: Coal and guns being elevated to the status of platonic ideals or, even more loftily, the refrain of a bad country song. All it was missing was Jesus, beer and Wrangler butts.
Scott Pruitt Has Been Mining Some Bad Coal Stats
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On June 4, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt claimed that since December 2016, the nation had “added almost 50,000 jobs in the coal sector. In the month of May alone, almost 7,000 jobs.” Pruitt was trying to defend President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement in a TV interview, but his figures aren’t even close to accurate.
Here's What's at Stake If Congress Kills the Methane Rules
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In the 1880s, farmers on Colorado's Front Range got fired up about—what else? Water. Their irrigation water came from Clear Creek, a stream that gets its start up on the Continental Divide, then tumbles through mining country before spilling onto the plains west of Denver.
Here’s What’s at Stake If Congress Kills the Methane Rules
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In the 1880s, farmers on Colorado’s Front Range got fired up about—what else? Water. Their irrigation water came from Clear Creek, a stream that gets its start up on the Continental Divide, then tumbles through mining country before spilling onto the plains west of Denver.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Jonathan
Contact Jonathan, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack