Nick Bowlin
A Good Prospect | Mining Climate Anxiety for Profit
Nick Bowlin
Four billion years ago, our planet was a restive place, full of geological commotion. At the earth’s center, a molten metal core began to coalesce, while heat and radioactive energy kept large swaths of the surface liquid. Violent volcanic forces made and remade the landscape. Over eons, magma pooled and hardened, forming some of the oldest and most stable parts of the earth’s crust. Heat, pressure, and fluid heavy with...
Joke’s on Them | The Democratic Party Meets Rural America
Nick Bowlin
One evening a few summers ago, I walked from my house to the county fairgrounds. It was a long July day, and the sun still hung above the hills that surround the small western Colorado town where I live. People packed the bleachers of an outdoor arena to watch a rodeo. Shortly before the bullriding began, a rodeo clown strolled to the center of the dirt field and began his...
The Land Was Ours | Trump, Biden, and Public Lands
Nick Bowlin
Northern Nevada, not far from the Oregon border, is a vast steppe, where rolling hills and basins stretch on for hundreds of miles beneath sagebrush and other shrubs that can endure the cold winters and dry summers. Beneath the surface are deposits of minerals, the sort that make our phones glow and electric cars run. It is one of the darkest regions — with the lowest levels of light pollution...