By Rusty Rogers, guest columnist
I have never been on the board of a power company or done any research on power plants, other than that any Wyomingite should have been doing for the last few years. I do watch what is happening in Cheyenne, as much as I can. I do far too much trusting in the folks we elect. We’ve all had some hard lessons the last year or so on that subject.
I think we can all agree that the[S1] Trump years made some things very clear. Lowering taxes and reducing the government footprint on our necks is excellent for the economy. Raising taxes and regulations is bad and never does what the politicians promise it will.
We need to change some things here in God’s Country and I’m hearing some very good ideas. The carbon capture technology they are currently looking at in Cheyenne I must confess I, for some reason, thought was already in play. That’s on me, it must move ahead. It’s not just good for business but for Wyoming and nature.
Small ultra-safe nuclear plants extremely good, love the idea. We are ideally situated geographically to be a real power player without substantially increasing our population. It will go up, has to, but not too much we hope.
We also have the option of rare earth metals and maybe the manufacture of the items that require them. But power is and for the very long foreseeable future, will be and I really like the several options I’m seeing in the daily by a couple of writers.
I detest it when politicians raise taxes, it seems it’s the first thing they want to do and they all know it doesn’t work. I’m glad we had to do the cutbacks, it was overdue.
Education is changing, we need to change with it.
As I mentioned in a column some time ago, in the 2 decades prior to Trump the wage for the Wyoming state employees went up 139% while the average for private sector stagnated and in some cases went down. So maybe we hold off on raises for a while.
We have coal, gas, uranium, knowledge and ability. We can be the power supplier 24/7/365 to most of the nation. Raising taxes at this time would slow all of that down.
Wind at it’s best is about 60% efficient and we are at about 45 now, solar tops out at 33% and we’ve reached 20. It will be a long time before either are more than supplements. The power we can supply will always be needed.
So, Wally Wolski and Bill Sniffin, thank you for your insightful and thought provoking articles. Now send a copy to each and every Senator and Representative in Cheyenne. Maybe it’ll help.
