High Country News

“For many, the present is already feeling pretty dystopian.” Arizona and regions across the U.S. are seeing record-high temperatures — and the heat will only intensify. At High Country News, Jessica Kutz reports that climate fiction, Indigenous architecture, and a robot named MaRTy are a few key things that can prepare us for a hotter future.

An LA native reflects on the city’s elusive nature, its dazzling complexity, and the effect the city has had on her life as a writer. No matter how LA changes, it never dulls.

Expropriated Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system.

“But losing her friend twice, first to cancer and then to the underworld of the cadaver market, reminded her that, no matter how much she attempted to confront death, there were many unimagined trap doors.”

For too long, California’s public school history curriculum has reduced Indigenous people to peaceful workers at the Spanish missions, and omitted their enslavement and suffering. Can California Assembly Bill 738 correct that?

In Death Valley National Park lies Devils Hole: an aquifer-fed pool home to one of the rarest fish species in the world — the Devils Hole pupfish. The pupfish has been the center of controversy between conservationists dedicated to protecting the inch-long fish species and Nevadans who believe the fish isn’t worth sacrificing their right to pump water on their land. Trent Sargent learned about how well the pupfish is protected the hard way.

By 2050, the ocean is expected to consistently flood Imperial Beach, California, but in recent years, high tides have already flooded many streets. The town is now discussing how to confront rising sea levels. One tactic is called a managed retreat, and the discussion alone has many property owners trying to sell.

Cisco, Utah isn’t a ghost town. Thirty-four year old Eileen Muza lives there, for now.

Outdoorsy types may love recreating in nature, but that doesn’t make them conservationists.