A year ago I wrote: “Urban and affluent newcomers to our region bring an utterly different value system for the land. To them, commodity extraction is inferior to the amenity value of land — scenery, recreation, open space, fish and wildlife, wilderness. Rather than the ‘boomers’ decried by [Wallace] Stegner, we now attract landscape architects […]

On March 14, the Wall Street Journal ran a 12-page special on the NCAA Basketball Tournament. The feature story by Stefan Fatsis, “Where Are They Now,” followed the post-tournament career of Mississippi State University’s 1996 Final Four team. (It ranged from prison to college administration.) Fatsis described tensions inherent to melding academic and athletic goals. […]

Contrary to recent rumors and reports in the New York Times, environmentalism is not dead. An essay declaring it so, “The Death of Environmentalism,” has sparked an intense debate. Environmentalism is in trouble — but not for the reasons claimed. Modern environmentalism evolved from the radical social movements of the late 1960s. As a social […]

High human capital is critical to future success. Forty years ago, Montana’s per capita income ranked in the middle of the states. Now we are near the bottom. Here’s why. Montana’s traditional economic base of agriculture, forest products, and metals has dramatically declined and has no prospects for future growth. This is the result of […]

The International Energy Agency projects 65 percent growth in world energy demand by 2020. Two questions pop up: How will we meet this energy demand and what are the environmental consequences of our choices? When we consider these issues we confront three vexing realities. First, fossil fuels (i.e., oil and coal) are our cheapest, most […]