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A Watershed Moment: The American West in the Age of Limits
399 pages, Paperback
Published October 31, 2024
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August 20, 2025
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes (1963), the father of macroeconomics, prophesied that by 2030 technological advances would have largely displaced human labor. Then, “the love of money as a possession will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity.” It is only then, he continued, “when the accumulation of wealth is no longer the central impulse of humanity, that we shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of highest virtues.”
As Katherine Rundell (2024) notes in her excellent book about the extinction crisis, Keynes was no oracle; he was overly optimistic about humanity. “But he was utterly right in this: a dramatic recalibration will be necessary. We will need the decoupling of desire and conspicuous consumption, a new way of thinking about power, community, joy, luxury. History doesn’t suggest it will be easy, but it does tell us that it is possible.”
Keynes’s and Rundell’s observations could have written specifically about the American West in the first quarter of the 21st century. It is a time of reckoning for the West, with drought, surging population growth, loss of community identity, resource extraction, burgeoning recreation demand, wildlife depletion and climate change all conspiring to challenge the historic perception of the region’s seemingly boundlessness. As co-editor Robert Frodeman notes in his contribution to A Watershed Moment, “Limits are a bad match for the myth of the frontier.”
The project that resulted in this book was spearheaded by its three co-editors. Robert Frodeman is a former academic who writes on environmental philosophy and science and technology policy. Evelyn Brister is a philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology who works on environmental justice and conservation policy. Luther Probst is an elected Teton County, Wyoming commissioner who founded the Sonoran Institute in 1991 and served as its executive director until 2012.
A Watershed Moment is organized into five themed sections, each containing four or five essays exploring the section’s topic in depth. The individual essays were written by one, two, three (and, in one case, six) contributors who are policymakers, government officials, land stewards, biologists, journalists and tribal members. I had the opportunity to talk with Frodeman and Brister before one of the series of presentations they made throughout the West that accompanied the book’s publication. I told Brister that I intended to write a review, but that I was always reluctant to tackle books with multiple diverse contributors like this volume because of the unevenness of the writing. Brister assured me that the editors had worked closely with the authors to ensure that the tone and the writing quality were consistent throughout the essays. With perhaps two exceptions, the editors succeeded admirably.
The five sections of the book address, in order, resource use and overuse, equitable communities, preserving private and public land, wildlife conservation, and ecological restoration. Each of the essays comprising the sections is structured as a case study of a specific, place-based challenge or controversial situation. Most importantly, however, the editors required the authors to conclude their essays with positive, practical approaches to addressing these situations that might be widely applicable throughout the intermountain West.
For example, small towns are increasingly forced to contend with a New West economy fueled by remote workers, wealthy retirees, and recreationists. These new residents and tourists in Salmon (ID), Jackson (WY), Telluride (CO), Bozeman (MT) and Sedona (AZ) overwhelm municipal services, drive up housing prices to levels that are unaffordable for long-time residents and service workers, alter the historic character of the communities, and disrupt or destroy wildlife habitat in the urban-wildland interface. Approaches to solving these increasingly widespread problems developed in one community may be applicable broadly.
The book includes an unusual amount of well written and interesting introductory material that lays the basis for the individual essays. University of Utah law professor Robert B. Kreiter sets the stage with a short but cogent foreword, which is followed by a short preface by the three co-editors. Brister contributes a detailed introduction that also summarizes the findings of the individual case studies that follow. Frodeman offers a perceptive, compelling and sweeping assessment of the state of the intermountain West in his essay, “The West as Myth and Reality.”
Each of the individual case studies is backed up by citations to published literature; the citations are gathered in a References section at the end of the book rather than following each essay. The book also includes a comprehensive index. The text is supplemented with a good general map of the intermountain West as well as regional maps as appropriate. A modest number of diagrams, graphs, and black-and-white photographs highlight details in some of the specific case studies.
Readers with an interest in natural history may find the most resonance with the sections on wildlife conservation and wildfires and on ecological restoration. The wildlife essays include two that focus on the impacts of recreation in Yellowstone and human encroachment on ungulate migration routes in Wyoming. A particularly personal, poignant, and blackly humorous contribution by Stewart W. Breck recounts his professional efforts to discourage black bears from becoming habituated to humans in two Colorado mountain towns. The restoration case studies center on the shrinking Great Salt Lake, riparian restoration in newly exposed canyons tributary to shrinking Lake Powell, management challenges on the Snake River, and the controversies surrounding the reintroduction and range expansion of beavers throughout the West. Nevertheless, all sections of the book are interesting; issues centered on resource extraction, land management and community development always have implications for wildlife conservation and ecosystem integrity.
A Watershed Moment is an important, clear-eyed and comprehensive addition to the literature of the contemporary West. The book examines opportunities that might represent a framework for fostering the compromises that will be needed for the West to begin to live within its means.
As the late western novelist and essayist Wallace Stegner (1992) perceived, the West is distinct, defined by its aridity and expansive public lands. Stegner lamented the region’s historic exploitation while memorably observing, “It is hard to be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the pattern that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have…a chance to create a society to match its scenery.”
References
Keynes, J.M. 1963. Economic possibilities for our grandchildren. Pages 321-333 in Essays in Persuasion. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.
Rundell, K. 2024. Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Stegner, W. 1992. Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs. New York, NY: Random House.
As Katherine Rundell (2024) notes in her excellent book about the extinction crisis, Keynes was no oracle; he was overly optimistic about humanity. “But he was utterly right in this: a dramatic recalibration will be necessary. We will need the decoupling of desire and conspicuous consumption, a new way of thinking about power, community, joy, luxury. History doesn’t suggest it will be easy, but it does tell us that it is possible.”
Keynes’s and Rundell’s observations could have written specifically about the American West in the first quarter of the 21st century. It is a time of reckoning for the West, with drought, surging population growth, loss of community identity, resource extraction, burgeoning recreation demand, wildlife depletion and climate change all conspiring to challenge the historic perception of the region’s seemingly boundlessness. As co-editor Robert Frodeman notes in his contribution to A Watershed Moment, “Limits are a bad match for the myth of the frontier.”
The project that resulted in this book was spearheaded by its three co-editors. Robert Frodeman is a former academic who writes on environmental philosophy and science and technology policy. Evelyn Brister is a philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology who works on environmental justice and conservation policy. Luther Probst is an elected Teton County, Wyoming commissioner who founded the Sonoran Institute in 1991 and served as its executive director until 2012.
A Watershed Moment is organized into five themed sections, each containing four or five essays exploring the section’s topic in depth. The individual essays were written by one, two, three (and, in one case, six) contributors who are policymakers, government officials, land stewards, biologists, journalists and tribal members. I had the opportunity to talk with Frodeman and Brister before one of the series of presentations they made throughout the West that accompanied the book’s publication. I told Brister that I intended to write a review, but that I was always reluctant to tackle books with multiple diverse contributors like this volume because of the unevenness of the writing. Brister assured me that the editors had worked closely with the authors to ensure that the tone and the writing quality were consistent throughout the essays. With perhaps two exceptions, the editors succeeded admirably.
The five sections of the book address, in order, resource use and overuse, equitable communities, preserving private and public land, wildlife conservation, and ecological restoration. Each of the essays comprising the sections is structured as a case study of a specific, place-based challenge or controversial situation. Most importantly, however, the editors required the authors to conclude their essays with positive, practical approaches to addressing these situations that might be widely applicable throughout the intermountain West.
For example, small towns are increasingly forced to contend with a New West economy fueled by remote workers, wealthy retirees, and recreationists. These new residents and tourists in Salmon (ID), Jackson (WY), Telluride (CO), Bozeman (MT) and Sedona (AZ) overwhelm municipal services, drive up housing prices to levels that are unaffordable for long-time residents and service workers, alter the historic character of the communities, and disrupt or destroy wildlife habitat in the urban-wildland interface. Approaches to solving these increasingly widespread problems developed in one community may be applicable broadly.
The book includes an unusual amount of well written and interesting introductory material that lays the basis for the individual essays. University of Utah law professor Robert B. Kreiter sets the stage with a short but cogent foreword, which is followed by a short preface by the three co-editors. Brister contributes a detailed introduction that also summarizes the findings of the individual case studies that follow. Frodeman offers a perceptive, compelling and sweeping assessment of the state of the intermountain West in his essay, “The West as Myth and Reality.”
Each of the individual case studies is backed up by citations to published literature; the citations are gathered in a References section at the end of the book rather than following each essay. The book also includes a comprehensive index. The text is supplemented with a good general map of the intermountain West as well as regional maps as appropriate. A modest number of diagrams, graphs, and black-and-white photographs highlight details in some of the specific case studies.
Readers with an interest in natural history may find the most resonance with the sections on wildlife conservation and wildfires and on ecological restoration. The wildlife essays include two that focus on the impacts of recreation in Yellowstone and human encroachment on ungulate migration routes in Wyoming. A particularly personal, poignant, and blackly humorous contribution by Stewart W. Breck recounts his professional efforts to discourage black bears from becoming habituated to humans in two Colorado mountain towns. The restoration case studies center on the shrinking Great Salt Lake, riparian restoration in newly exposed canyons tributary to shrinking Lake Powell, management challenges on the Snake River, and the controversies surrounding the reintroduction and range expansion of beavers throughout the West. Nevertheless, all sections of the book are interesting; issues centered on resource extraction, land management and community development always have implications for wildlife conservation and ecosystem integrity.
A Watershed Moment is an important, clear-eyed and comprehensive addition to the literature of the contemporary West. The book examines opportunities that might represent a framework for fostering the compromises that will be needed for the West to begin to live within its means.
As the late western novelist and essayist Wallace Stegner (1992) perceived, the West is distinct, defined by its aridity and expansive public lands. Stegner lamented the region’s historic exploitation while memorably observing, “It is hard to be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the pattern that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have…a chance to create a society to match its scenery.”
References
Keynes, J.M. 1963. Economic possibilities for our grandchildren. Pages 321-333 in Essays in Persuasion. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.
Rundell, K. 2024. Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Stegner, W. 1992. Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs. New York, NY: Random House.
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