Episodes

Kate and Aaron are joined by water scientist Brad Udall to talk about the current state of the Colorado River. Water levels are dropping and something has to give or the river’s main reservoirs—Lake Powell and Lake Mead— are going to run dry. But states aren’t anywhere close to an agreement on how much each one is going to cut back. Udall, who teaches at Colorado State University and researches the impact of climate change on the Colorado River, is here to explain what’s going on, how dire the ...

Aaron and Kate are joined by two mining reform experts to talk about the need to update our century-old mining laws and regulations in order to protect vulnerable communities and public lands as interest in mining grows thanks to electric vehicles and renewable energy needs. Roger Flynn is the director and managing attorney at Western Mining Action Project, a nonprofit law project working on hard rock mining. He also teaches mining law at the University of Colorado law school. Aaron Mintzes is ...

Mining expert Ian Lange joins Kate and Aaron to talk about critical minerals and mining in the West. Lange directs the mineral and energy economics program at the Colorado School of Mines and is an expert in mining economics. He discusses what’s going on in the world of critical minerals—specifically those used in electric vehicle batteries. These include cobalt, copper, lithium, and nickel and are mostly mined overseas, but we do have some of them here in the U.S. And we could see a big increas...

On this episode of The Landscape, Kate and Aaron are joined by Grand Canyon Trust staff attorney Michael Toll to discuss a plan to mine hundreds of thousands of barrels of waxy crude oil in Utah near Dinosaur National Monument, using billions of gallons of Colorado River Water. A loophole in Utah law enabled an Estonian state-owned company called Enefit to buy 3.2 billion gallons of Colorado River water for just $10 in 2015. Now, Enefit wants to use that water to extract oil in the Uinta Basin ...

On this episode of The Landscape, Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Jennifer Rokala and CWP Director of Campaigns and Special Projects Lauren Bogard join Aaron and Kate to go over the past year in public lands. From the passage of the largest climate bill in U.S. history (which includes major oil and gas leasing reforms) to a new national monument to the launch of a new conservation funding program, 2022 was a big year for public lands. The CWP team talks about what all of these d...