Laura Paskus
Stories by Laura Paskus
Apocalypse Soon
In New Mexico, environmental horrors abound. Corporations influence the government’s ability to regulate environmental emergencies, people who might otherwise be allies have faced off against one another in battle, and climate change is already punching its tentacles into the Southwestern landscape. SFR explores the potential, scary science fiction future.
Generation Green
As the economy continues to stagger and the effects of climate change become more obvious, many on the local front lines of the green-jobs movement believe the chasm between rhetoric and reality also grows more discernible. They say the state’s best hope for transformation—environmental and economic—may lie with its youth.
Stealing the Past
Using undercover sources, agents from the FBI and the US Bureau of Land Management spent more than two years infiltrating a tight-knit community of looters in the Four Corners area who dig up graves and pillage archaeological sites on public lands, then sell the items they find to dealers and collectors.
Who's Afraid of...
Under a questionable partnership, the Fish and Wildlife Service has managed to give away its statutory responsibility to recover endangered species to a consortium of agencies, allege critics of the way wolf introduction is being managed in the southwest. Wolves are being removed—or killed—by the very people charged with reintroducing the animals to the wild.
Disturbing the Pieces
Signs of ancient life are everywhere in New Mexico. Consider the Galisteo Basin, just outside the city of Santa Fe, where hundreds of archaeological sites blanket the ground. These range from drawings etched hundreds of years ago onto boulders and scatters of flaked stone—where someone sat and chipped a tool, leaving behind bits and pieces of rock—to entire villages and sacred ceremonial structures.
But not everyone believes the State Land Office is properly overseeing the thousands of archaeological resources on state lands. As a result, archaeologists say, history is being lost.
Down and Dirty
Proponents of the Desert Rock power plant say it will create 1,000 construction jobs and then approximately 200 permanent jobs once it’s up and running.But the region already has three coal-fired power plants, including two in the Four Corners, which are considered among the dirtiest plants in the country.
Parting Gifts
In a rush to further relax environmental rules and deregulate oversight, the Bush administration is pushing a number of rule changes to take effect before Inauguration Day: easing restrictions on power plants, allowing factory farms to skirt the Clean Water Act and weakening toxic emissions standards for oil refineries, among other things.
Red, Green or GMO?
While the cultural importance of chile remains unshaken, the actual crop has seen better days. Between the shaky agricultural market and the influx of various diseases, commercial chile farmers say they are struggling to survive.
Scientists believe genetically modified chile seeds could be the answer to the crop’s woes.
Feel The Heat
Few people on the planet are unaware of climate change—reducing one’s carbon footprint has practically become a fashion statement. But behind the headlines and slogans, scientists are tracking the impacts global warming is already having—and projecting what is yet to come.
