In this week's issue, Lynne Peeples travels to the Celilo Indian Village in Oregon, where the push for a coal-export superhighway is a growing concern for the local Native American community.
The proposed expansion of coal exports is part of a much larger international narrative: While coal use has dropped domestically as natural gas and renewable energy have become more commonplace, fast-growing economies in China and India share a demand for coal that the U.S. can supply.
"If government agencies grant approval to three export terminals proposed for Oregon and Washington, up to 100 million metric tons of coal per year could soon be shuttled in open rail cars from mines in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana, along the shores of the Columbia River and the Puget Sound, and through ranches and reservations like this one," Lynne writes. "The coal would then be loaded onto ships destined for Asia's proliferating fleet of coal-fired power plants."
The affected tribes are worried about toxic coal dust rising off passing trains, which could potentially poison local waterways and contaminate a crucial resource -- salmon.
But the debate isn't just about environmental effects. What these tribes see as a major problem, others view as a necessity for survival. "We rely on coal just as they rely on salmon," CJ Stewart, senator of the Crow Nation tribe, tells Lynne. "All tribes share one common enemy, and that enemy is poverty."
Elsewhere in the issue, Rebecca Adams speaks to skincare guru Linda Rodin, who at 65 is beginning to book gigs as a model, including a recent ad campaign for Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's high-end fashion line, The Row. "It's funny to think that people want to take my photograph -- why didn't they want to take it when I had no wrinkles?" Rodin jokes.
Rodin has a refreshing attitude toward aging -- she's embraced her full head of stunning white hair (which went gray in her mid-30s), and has never considered plastic surgery. "Aren't we curious to see how we'd grow up?" she says.
In our Voices section, HuffPost Los Angeles editor Sasha Bronner writes a moving essay about her experience at a five-day silent meditation retreat in Big Sur, Calif.
"The act of exaggerated silence filled me with the purest sense of calm I have ever felt," Sasha writes. "Talking and laughing and reading and music still make me feel alive. But so does silence."
Finally, as part of our continued focus on the Third Metric, we look at the many health risks you're taking when you deprive your body of sleep.
This story appears in Issue 87 of our weekly iPad magazine, Huffington, available Friday, Feb. 7 in the iTunes App store.