Russell Gold

The Sweetwater Cemetery welcomed its first permanent resident, an infant, in 1880. That was four years before the incorporation of the city, about forty miles west of Abilene, where the short-grass prairie that sweeps down from Canada peters out. Today the graveyard houses the final resting spots of many pioneers, immigrants, and Civil War veterans, according to a historical plaque on its gate. Across the street sits another graveyard, of sorts. It opened in 2017 and has become a long-term ho…

Yolanda Carmona’s job is to market Van Horn to the rest of the world. It comes naturally to her. She grew up visiting family in the small West Texas town, a stop on Interstate 10 between Fort Stockton and El Paso that most travelers know, if they know it at all, as a place to fill your car with gas and your stomach with good Mexican food. She takes pride in—and feels protective of—the hamlet and the surrounding stretch of desert where her family has been raising cattle for a century. As the e…

The first thing I notice on entering the store is the smell. It is an earthy sandalwood mixed with some type of citrus, perhaps sour lemon. It tells me I am in the right place, because I am here to buy cannabis. On my left sits a smoking lounge with four booths facing large windows that look out on an upscale South Austin shopping center. To my right, behind a glass window, is a demonstration grow room—more for show than large-scale cultivation. Straight ahead, on the back wall, a large lacquere…

QuailGuard is the first publicly available FDA-approved medication for wild animals.

Our state is far too reliant on expensive, reactive, post-crisis measures that leave Texans sweating in the dark. It’s time we prioritized prevention.

As Texas’s population booms and the state grows hotter and drier, it’s more important than ever to understand: Who’s wasting our water? Without water, there’s no fracking. Without fracking, there’s no twenty-first-century Texas oil boom. Water’s role is evident in the full name of the process—hydraulic fracturing. Drillers pump water, laced with sand and chemicals, deep into the ground to crack open the ancient rocks of the Permian Basin, releasing trapped fossil fuels from their primordia…

Were the leases for generators unfairly awarded because of an unspecified personal connection between the utility’s leader and a Life Cycle Power employee?

Thanks to its fracking expertise, the city is playing a big part in the future of the very low-carbon power source.

An ingenious Texan’s invention may soon bring extensive mining of the metal—vital for our battery-powered future—to the northeast corner of the state.

The pro-fracking video oversimplifies a nuanced debate over a technology that—love it or hate it—boasts a promising future.