CODY — The fighting spirt is alive in Wyoming when it comes to outsiders messing with coal and the livelihoods of people who draw paychecks from digging up the ore.
The top politicians in the Cowboy State say the Biden administration and others in Washington, D.C., pushing those policies have created an emergency in Wyoming and are cruisin' for a bruisin’.
Gov. Mark Gordon and U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, both Wyoming Republicans, drew a red line with Washington, D.C.’s ever-expansive powers that it possesses through the Bureau of Land Management and Environmental Protection Agency to shut down the coal industry in Wyoming on Friday.
The pair gave a hand-slapping series of speeches to close out the Wyoming Mining Association’s annual convention in Cody.
If the liberal bastions of America want a world with no fossil fuels, let them step up and lead by example, Hageman said in her fiery speech. She suggested Boulder, Colorado, could become a test city for being cut off from all fossil fuels and see how well that works for that liberal city she says is living “in la-la land.”
Let Boulder Lead The Way
“I absolutely refuse to buy into the idea of global warming and climate change,” Hageman said.
“When they talk about transitioning to [wind and solar], when they talk about stopping coal production in the Powder River Basin by 2041, when they talk about no longer doing any more oil and gas leases in [the BLM’s] Rock Springs Field Office, when they talk about those things, it’s not hard to figure out what the future holds for us,” she said. “We all know that there are certain things that we absolutely need in a civilized society, and most of those things don’t exist unless we have access to oil and gas and coal.”
Hageman mockingly suggested that the city of Boulder, Colorado, step up as a pilot project among urban cities in the U.S. to see how it gets along without fossil fuels.
“I actually suggest that we start demanding something as an industry and as citizens who want a better life for our children and our grandchildren, or at least maintaining the American Dream that we have. And I don’t think this is out of line,” she said. “If they want to transition 330 million people to a non-fossil fuel future, how about it starts small? How about we start with a pilot project like Boulder, Colorado? Let’s take out all their gas stations, let’s take out all their gas stoves, all their water heaters, all the pavement and return them to dirt roads, right?”
Unicorns And Fairy Dust
Boulder is viewed in Colorado as ground zero for decarbonization efforts led by that state’s governor, Jared Polis, who has embraced a roadmap to cut greenhouse gases in half by 2030. The state’s utilities are behind efforts to reduce emissions by 85% by 2040.
“Let’s imagine Boulder is just absolutely the perfect place in the world. They have a lot of sun. They have a lot of wind. They’ve got all this open space. I think we ought to fill it with wind turbines and solar panels, and let’s see how well they do in five years,” she said. “They wouldn’t survive more than two-and-a-half months.
She labeled Boulder as a place living in a kind of Bizarro world where everything operates in reverse reality.
"We’re living in a la-la land. We’re with unicorns and fairy dust. That doesn’t make sense,” she said.
On Saturday, Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett, a self-described liberal Democrat, declined to respond to Hageman’s mockery of his Colorado city.
“We are choosing not to engage in this discourse at this time,” said Sarah Huntley, a spokeswoman for Brockett.
“Wyoming is being targeted by this (Biden) administration. Our conservatives are being targeted by this administration. Our industries are being targeted by this administration,” Hageman continued in her comments Friday. “When you start thinking about the rules and regulations and things they’ve adopted, it starts opening your eyes to the fact that we are going to have to fight back with everything that we have."
Riled Up
Gordon’s administration earlier Friday got things going with taking the first step to find a high-powered law firm to go on the attack with the EPA over its proposed rule that could result in the retirement of Wyoming-based power plants. The EPA rule could derail the state’s efforts to push investment in carbon capture equipment on power plants to lower toxic emissions into the air. The equipment is needed to extend the life of the electricity-generating plants.
“This [Biden] administration has an objective and they’ve missed it. They've completely missed it,” Gordon said. “Their objective is to figure out how this country is going to move forward, and they’ve made all these decisions about what we’re going to do to get there that has landed well short of what it's going to take to get us to the destination of making this country as strong and independent as we have always been.”
Gordon said he’s prepared to fight in court over the Biden administration’s decarbonization strategy.
At the beginning of 2024, Wyoming was involved in about 33 lawsuits to fight the administration’s efforts to rid the world of fossil fuels, Gordon said.
“This administration has ramped up and thrown everything it can at the wall, hoping that some of it sticks,” he said. “We are now approaching 60 lawsuits that we’re either participating in or leading to make sure our country can stand on its own two feet.”
Gordon said he recently spoke with BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning about land policies flowing out of Washington that are negatively impacting Wyoming.
“She said, ‘Mark, I think you can relax. I think we’ve done about everything,’” said Gordon, who paraphrased her conversation that all of the “big, major things are out of the way for Wyoming.”
Jaw-Dropping
He said his jaw dropped in her cavalier observation that things are working out.
“I said, ‘Well, maybe what you meant to say was that you’ve done everything you can to Wyoming, and you can’t think of anything more to throw at us,’” he said. "Where this leaves us at this juncture is we are going to continue whatever way we can to help advance Wyoming’s interests that are tied entirely to what the mining industry can bring to the state."
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
