Walk in to a town council meeting in Pinedale, Wyoming, and you’re likely to find as many as three local reporters scribbling notes and asking questions. That news in a town of 2,030 residents is covered by two newspapers and a website is partly explained by the abundance of mineral wealth in surrounding Sublette County, which produced $3.6 billion in natural gas last year. Add to that the urgent concern about breaching a local dam threatened by record snowmelt coming from the Wind River Range, and you’ve got a recipe for a small-town media frenzy.

This scene is also illustrative of how rural journalism is surviving, even thriving, in the rural West and across the United States, in an era of precipitous decline for major metropolitan newspapers.

In the United States, some 7,500 community newspapers–papers with under 30,000 in circulation–still hit the streets, front porches, and mailboxes at least once a week. A 2010 survey conducted by the University of Missouri, Columbia for the National Newspaper Association produced some enviable statistics: More than three-quarters of respondents said they read most or all of a local newspaper every week. And in news to warm the heart of any publisher, a full 94 percent said that they paid for their papers.

“The community newspaper business is healthier than metro newspapers, because it hasn’t been invaded by Internet competition,” says Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. “Craigslist doesn’t serve these kinds of communities. They have no effective competition for local news. Rural papers own the franchise locally of the most credible information.”

This is not to say that rural papers are simply going gangbusters. Rural newsrooms make for lean living and busy workweeks. Reporters have to wear many hats to put out a local paper, interviewing Eagle Scouts, snapping photos of the butter queen, writing editorials on the local rec center and stuffing supermarket circulars. And many of these papers are an advertiser or two away from red ink.

All of this is in the service of developing a relationship with the local readers that some people say that mainstream journalism has lost, a relationship with all the complications that intimacy and proximity bring. “You have only one day a week to beat the daily on timeliness,” wrote the editor and publisher Bruce M. Kennedy in his 1974 book, Community Journalism. But “weeklies can add a personal touch,” he added. “There’s license to ‘visit’ more. You have time and space to be a small-town citizen talking with another about your community.”

“Emus Loose in Egnar”

“It is more than a little ironic that small-town papers have been thriving by practicing what the mainstream media are now preaching,” writes the broadcast journalist and USC professor Judy Muller in her new book, Emus Loose in Egnar: Big Stories from Small Towns (University of Nebraska Press).  “’Hyper-localism,’ ‘Citizen Journalism,’ ‘Advocacy Journalism’ — these are some of the latest buzzwords of the profession. But the concepts, without the fancy names, have been around for ages in small-town newspapers.”

Inspired by the local weekly in the working-class Rocky Mountain town of Norwood, Colorado, Muller embarked on a lively, funny and engaging tour of small papers that took her across the country, from Concrete, Washington to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

“I was surprised to find that they’re doing as well as they were,” says Muller, whose book looks at feisty family-owned papers like the Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Kentucky, whose founders survived a firebombing, the Guadalupe County Communicator, the “sixth smallest weekly in New Mexico,” whose new owner had been a national correspondent for the Rocky Mountain News, and the Dove Creek Press in Colorado, whose editors are so reluctant to deliver bad news that when doctors estimate a car crash victim’s chance of paralysis at 99 percent, it writes “the family reports that Kelsi is looking to the 1 percent  chance she still has.”

According to the publisher Bruce M. Kennedy, “the study of weekly journalism is inescapably the study of small towns.” Muller writes movingly about the close bond between small town papers and their populations. She describes the elation in the depressed Skagit Valley town of Concrete, Washington, when a young outsider came to revive their newspaper, the Herald. “People were–I’m not kidding–crying and hugging him, “says Muller, “and the paper’s not all that good, frankly, but what it represents to those folks who are so isolated up in that canyon is really powerful.”

The importance of the community of a local paper is something that John Wylie, publisher of the Oologah, Oklahoma Lake Leader argued for in a 2007 speech to a rural journalism conference:

“To our readers, we are not the newspaper, we are THEIR newspaper. Down the block at Rogers Mini Stop, we sell more than a hundred papers every week. If our press run is late we get frantic calls from the Rogers family. They have a store full of irate customers who want THEIR papers NOW…. We all know the traditional reasons — the little stories that never would be considered ‘news’ anyplace else. Our readers really care about those things.”

So what are townsfolk waiting for so urgently? “I think the holy trinity of the small town paper is obituaries, the police blotter, and high school sports,” says Muller. “That’s what people care about. The police blotter is where you find out who’s doing what to whom. The school superintendent beating his wife, from there it gets blown into a bigger story. The high school sports thing is so huge, I can’t even explain it to a person who doesn’t live in a small town. And births, not just obits, tend to dominate. If you leave town, and you subscribe online, those are the things, ‘Oh my God, old Pete just died’ — that might seem insignificant to someone outside of a small town, but every single birth and death means something.”

But surely local journalism has to be about more than recording comings and goings, nighttime calls for help, and salutes to BearCat pride? Muller finds ample journalistic inspiration in the pages of small-town papers, what she calls “this wonderful crucible of telling the truth, weighing that against living with the people you’re writing about.”

Muller describes the Ezzel family’s courage in publishing their Canadian Record in a conservative Texas panhandle town. Throughout the 60′s, the paper gave full-throated support to the civil rights movement and later, opposition to the Vietnam War, despite broken windows and a local business boycott (which was announced in a newspaper advertisement, no less). More recently, the second-generation publisher, Laurie Ezzel, successfully crusaded against plans for large-scale hog farming operation that would have brought jobs but, as she persuaded residents, would have tainted the area’s precious groundwater supply.

Perhaps it is in the American West where brave editorial stands can make the most difference to a town’s future, where the character of a community can turn on a dime according to the departure or arrival of an industry. Muller writes about the evolution of Jim Stiles, the editor of the Moab, Utah Zephyr, who rallied successfully against energy and timber development in the 1980s, only to turn equally against the ensuing tourism boom that transformed the area into a mecca for cyclists and second-home owners. “When we talk about changing the rural West,” he tells Muller, “we’re threatening the traditional lives of some very nice people.”

Muller takes us to the town of Hardin, Montana, which built a $27 million jail complex on spec, then launched a doomed campaign to house Guantanamo Bay inmates. The issue touches off a furious wrestling match among the local paper, the Big Horn County News, the local gossip sheet, the Original Briefs, and the Crow tribe’s newspaper, the Apsáalooke Nation. Muller’s storytelling shines as she leads us through the maze of conflicting agendas, local feuds, and the befuddlement of a newly arrived national reporter at the News, who tries to play it straight and gets virtually run out of town for his efforts.

His editor laments, “Mike came in with what I call the ‘Tin Man’ reporter concept: you are protected, you don’t associate with the people you cover, you have no relationship to them, nor do you have the desire to develop one.” Muller says that the reporter is now working for a small paper in another state. “He gets it now,” she says. “You can still tell the story, but you write it in a way that makes it clear you are part of the community.”

Rural journalism analyst Al Cross says, “The best of these newspapers hold local governments and institutions accountable, by covering meetings and asking for records. They’re prophylactics, by exposing bad things that are going on.” But he says, at the same time, “a lot of papers are timid editorially, they don’t take stands. One is a social reason, they’d rather make friends than enemies–although personally I think they’re in the wrong business. Then you have the business reasons. In these smaller markets, some of these papers are an advertiser away from red ink, so they’re cautious by nature. ‘Don’t get sued, they say. It’s like they never heard of libel insurance, which is pretty cheap.”

To Muller, biting the hand that feeds you is the definition of courageous journalism: “Papers that–faced with the loss of revenue from a big advertiser–who speak the truth anyway, that’s just pure heroism.”

Pinedale’s Media Scene

Back in Pinedale, the century-old Roundup and its 10-year-old rival, the Sublette Examiner, reach about 3,000 and 2,500 subscribers, respectively. The Examiner was started by disaffected reporters from the Roundup after an ownership change in 2000. The papers came under common ownership in 2006, when the Examiner was bought by the NewsMedia Corporation, an Illinois-based chain that runs 76 papers in nine mostly western states. After moving their publishing dates to opposite ends of the week, the new owners left the two papers largely alone. “They compete with each other, try to scoop each other,” says Jeff Robertson, who publishes both papers and a third in Eastern Wyoming, the Torrington Telegraph.

Such an arrangement is not surprising, says Al Cross. “Newspapers develop a subscriber list,” he says. “People in that community had to make a choice, I’m only going to subscribe to one. So why not keep them both going?”

Despite consolidation, weekly newspapers actually have a lower rate of chain ownership than dailies, with 60 percent owned by chains, compared to 80 percent of dailies, according to the National Newspaper Association. Nevertheless, the quality of newspapers does not strictly correspond to ownership. “If you’re in a chain and you have financial resources to support you,” says Al Cross, “you’re willing to take more risks, to lose an advertiser over coverage, to buy libel insurance and pay lawyer’s fees. But at same time, because chains are accountable to investor pressure, they can hamstring editorial operations.”

Judy Muller says that she expected to hear complaints about chain ownership of rural and small town newspapers. “I expected to hear that only family owned multi-generational papers had high standards,” says Judy Muller, “but I did not find that. Either way, you can have weak unethical people working for corporations or weak unethical people who cave in to people from the bank.”

The Roundup and the Examiner are similar in form and content, each of them recently flush with color photographs of local events like the high school prom and graduation, horseshoe pitches, cattle brandings, and reader-submitted wildlife photos (which, in this region, are spectacular). And surely to the lasting pride of Mariah Strike’s parents, both papers published the full text of the Pinedale High School valedictorian’s address, a sign not only of hyper-local interest, but also of papers with ad pages to spare, positively groaning with legal announcements like foreclosure listings and regulatory filings, the kind that have long fattened newspapers in county seats like Pinedale.

The newsrooms of both papers–which stand only 30 to 50 feet apart in an office complex made out of a former grocery store–are comprised of almost uniformly young reporters, like the 24 year-old editor of the Roundup, Casey Dean. The pay is low, says Dean, but it is supplemented by the free housing that the company offers. “One of my reporters, my intern and an Examiner reporter live in one house,” says Dean. “The ad director and one of the Examiner’s reporters live in company housing. Their office manager and myself live together, and that’s actually because she used to work for both offices.”

At both papers, the staffs are small and efficiencies are everywhere. NewsMedia maintains their nearly identical websites, and the newspapers are laid out in South Dakota. “I’ve never seen her in person,” says Dean, “but I’m on iChat all day long with my designer.”

The editors take pride in their reporting on local issues, like the dam breach, federal redistricting, wolf management and the 800-pound gorilla of economic development, the natural gas industry.

Dean, the Roundup’s editor, grew up in Pinedale before going to college in North Carolina. She thinks the industry should disclose the chemicals they are using to extract gas through hydraulic fracturing, but she acknowledges the benefits that the boom has brought. “I’m with a lot of the community as far as understanding how much it has made possible economically,” she says. But the community also wants to be “very careful and monitoring it and protecting the things that make Wyoming what it is,” she adds, “because this boom won’t last forever. We don’t want to be a ghost town in 20 years.”

Like a number of rural newspapers that target advertisers with niche-oriented supplements, the Roundup has a monthly section for the gas industry called “The Roughneck.” “We try to keep it positive for the industry,” says the publisher Jeff Robertson, “But if something more newsworthy comes out that’s against that, we won’t shy away from publishing it.”

Ron Aiken, until recently the editor of the Examiner, took a more skeptical stance on the energy bonanza, focusing on the disruption to the large herds of mule deer, elk, moose, and bighorn sheep that have made Pinedale a magnet for hunters and adventure sports enthusiast  ”People will say things like, ‘I never had a deer paying a local mortgage,’” he said. Aiken, who spent several years working at a daily newspaper and an alternative weekly in South Carolina, wrote a cheeky column on June 7 that lampooned the county’s boom in publicly-funded water parks, bowling alleys and agricultural halls. “So what is there left that, in keeping with the cautious nature of how oil and gas money has thus far been spent, would best serve Sublette County residents?” he asked, under the headline, “What Sublette County Needs is a Monorail.”

Aiken says that small-town papers have more room to innovate, citing the Examiner’s popular column “Grins and Gripes,” which runs 150-word blind items submitted anonymously by residents. “It’s a way to let people who wouldn’t normally write letters to the editor into the paper,” he says.

Local papers have largely resisted the pressure to offer content free online, sometimes capitalizing on their virtual monopoly on local news. Despite the competition with each other and from the free website Pinedale Online!, both the Roundup and the Examiner limit most online stories to one or two paragraph teases for the print edition and paid electronic downloads.

While they are careful to protect their core product from free online access, they still consider themselves open to new media. The Examiner uploads photographs to Facebook and often “tweets” news items before they appear in print. “These are things that the smallest papers can do just as effectively as larger newspapers,” says Aiken, “maybe more so.”

Al Cross thinks that community newspapers need to embrace the web, in spite of the risks. He says that as rural workers commute farther and farther to work, they will have less time to read newspapers and will be more likely to read hometown news at work on their computers or smartphones. “One third of papers don’t have websites,” he says, expressing concern about the growth of online-only startups from hyperlocal sites like the Post in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to the over 700 franchise-based Patch sites being propagated by AOL. “None of this is major competition for local newspapers, but like worms eating at their shoes, they ignore it at their peril.”

“Publishers in small and medium communities largely think they are safe from the readership and advertising declines that are eating away at most metro newspapers,” wrote the former publisher and media analyst Alan Mutter in a 2010 blog post. “Are they? Yes, no and maybe,” he concluded.  Internet competition might be the least of the threats to local papers, he wrote, compared to the wider demographic shifts. Rural areas are aging faster than urban and suburban ones, and younger readers may be less likely to buy newspapers, even when they get older. For small papers, long-time subsidies may be at risk as well: as the U.S. Postal Service looks for ways to stem its growing losses, the generous subsidy provided by free in-county mail delivery has once again come under scrutiny, as well as mail delivery on Saturdays. Perhaps most worrisome of all, rural papers still live and die with local businesses; Wal-Mart, for example, has little use for newspaper advertising, says Al Cross, and most national chains prefer to advertise in national media.

Still, community papers are looking like a haven in the media storm. Near the end of Emus Loose in Egnar, Muller cites a remark by Benjy Hamm, editorial director of a rural newspaper chain in South Carolina: “He is seeing more and more resumés from eager, young editors and big-city journalists who have either been victims of downsizing or growing weary of wondering if they will be next.”

“As the number of journalism jobs in metro papers declines,” says Al Cross, “I think rural journalism will be an increasingly popular outlet for people who want to take it on as a career. The monetary rewards are not as great, but there’s a great deal of personal reward that can come with it, and also an opportunity to get in on the ownership side.”

Muller agrees, “The reason a weekly thrives is because no one else on Earth can cover what they cover, people will not know what’s going on in their town in any other way. They’ve got a monopoly, a little fiefdom, for as long as the advertiser needs the market.”

As for local readers, she adds, “as long as refrigerator magnets exist, there will be things to clip and put on refrigerator, if your son was on the high school football team, it’s going on the fridge.”

This article was produced by the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University.

By Nicholas Kusnetz – ProPublica

Over the past year, five states have begun requiring energy companies to disclose some of the chemicals they pump into the ground to extract oil and gas using the process of hydraulic fracturing.

While state regulators and the drilling industry say the rules should help resolve concerns about the safety of drilling, critics and some scientists say the requirements fall short of what’s needed to fully understand the risks to public health and the environment.

The regulations allow companies to keep proprietary chemicals secret from the public and, in some states, from regulators. Though most of the states require companies to report the volume and concentration of different drilling products, no state asks for the amounts of all the ingredients, a gap that some say is disturbing.

“It’s a shell game,” said Theo Colborn, an environmental health analyst who has testified before Congress about the dangers of drilling chemicals. Colborn and her organization, TEDX, examine the long-term health risks of chemicals and have opposed the expansion of drilling in Colorado and elsewhere. “They’re not telling you everything that there is to know.”

Others say the regulations, despite some flaws, are moving in the right direction. “It’s just a step in the process,” said the Sierra Club’s Cyrus Reed, who worked on a bill signed into law in Texas on Friday [1].

Most drillers have supported the measures. Some say more complete disclosure isn’t necessary because the information that remains secret involves only nonhazardous chemicals or trade secrets that are a small fraction of products they inject. Energy companies recently have begun voluntarily disclosing some of the chemicals they use on FracFocus [2], a web site run by two groups representing state regulators.

“While we support disclosing our ingredients, it is critical to our business that we protect our recipe,” Tara Mullee Agard, a spokeswoman for Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oil and gas service companies, told ProPublica in an email.

Gas drilling has surged across the country over the past few years due to technological advances that include hydraulic fracturing, in which drillers pump millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals underground to free up trapped deposits of natural gas. Energy companies are increasingly using the technique, dubbed “fracking,” in oil recovery, particularly in Texas and North Dakota.

ProPublica first began reporting [3] on health and environmental concerns surrounding fracking three years ago. Gas companies are exempt from federal laws protecting water supplies, leaving it up to states to decide what sort of regulations are needed to protect ground and surface water.

Wyoming Takes The Lead

Wyoming’s rules are the strongest in place, although it’s unclear how thoroughly they are being enforced. The rules require public disclosure of all the chemicals except for trade secrets, which drillers must submit for regulators’ eyes only. The only thing the rule lacks, critics say, is a requirement to report the concentration of the individual chemicals.

Three reports that were selected at random and reviewed by ProPublica appeared to leave out some of the chemicals used. Tom Doll, the state’s oil and gas supervisor, said his agency has two staff members reviewing each of the reports.

“They’ve obviously missed some of these,” he said.

In Arkansas, manufacturers are not required to disclose proprietary fracking chemicals to regulators. Rules in Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania have similar exemptions. (See a summary of the state rules [4].)

Some environmentalists and toxicologists say the state rules give energy companies too much discretion.

Companies can get trade secret protection, for instance, simply by asserting that disclosure would hurt their business and showing that details about a chemical are not otherwise public. More than 100 such exemptions have been granted in Wyoming, though most of the exempt products haven’t been used, Doll said.

Advocates of disclosure say that, at a minimum, proprietary information should be on file with state regulators, as in Wyoming, so it can be accessed quickly in an emergency.

Federal law already requires chemical manufacturers to share trade secrets with health care providers in emergency situations, but getting the information into the public domain can be a slow process, said Daniel Teitelbaum, an adjunct professor of toxicology at the Colorado School of Mines.

“If you call someone on Saturday … it may be Tuesday before you can find someone who has the actual formula,” said Teitelbaum, who has worked for environmental groups on disclosure and chemical safety. “It is not a straightforward process by any means.”

On April 19, fracking fluids spilled during a blowout at a Chesapeake Energy well in Pennsylvania. [5] While no one was directly injured, Brian Grove, a company spokesman, said a full ingredient list [6] was provided to state regulators the following day and to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a week after the spill. Chesapeake voluntarily posted the list to FracFocus on May 13.

The mixture of fluids used to fracture a well generally contains several different products, which themselves can contain multiple chemical ingredients. While the industry has used hundreds of chemicals to frack wells across the country, the mixture regularly includes ingredients such as hydrochloric acid, methanol, a disinfectant called glutaraldehyde and petroleum distillates.

These chemicals usually comprise a tiny fraction of the overall mix, but since wells are injected with millions of gallons of fluid, the mix can include thousands of gallons of a chemical that can be toxic at low doses.

Deciding What’s Hazardous

Colborn and other toxicologists say one area of concern involves how “nonhazardous” chemicals are treated. Pennsylvania, Michigan and the FracFocus web site only disclose hazardous substances as determined by a product’s Material Safety Data Sheet.

Chemical manufacturers are required to list health hazards and ingredients that contribute to those hazards on these sheets, which are filed with the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration.

The sheets don’t have to list ingredients that are not considered hazardous, however, or chemicals that may damage the environment but haven’t been shown to harm humans. In determining what to report, manufacturers are not required to do their own testing and may rely on existing research that many toxicologists consider inadequate.

“We have just extraordinarily poor information on the whole portfolio of health effects that are possible from industrial chemicals,” said Michael Wilson, director of the Labor Occupational Health Program at the University of California, Berkeley. “In the great majority of cases, that information is not going to appear on a [Material Safety Data Sheet], in most cases because it’s not known.”

OSHA acknowledged as much in a 2004 report on chemical hazard communication [7]. “Even the best available evidence may not provide sufficient information about the hazardous effects or the way to protect someone from experiencing them,” the report said. The report noted in particular a lack of research on chronic health effects.

Chris Tucker, a spokesman for Energy in Depth, a drilling industry group, said chemical suppliers evaluate every product, so if an ingredient doesn’t make it onto an safety data sheet, it doesn’t pose a threat to human health. “That’s why it’s nonhazardous,” he said.

There are more than 80,000 chemicals registered for commercial use with the EPA, and Wilson said there is enough research to identify potential hazards for less than 2 percent of them.

Researchers with TEDX, Colborn’s organization, have reviewed Material Safety Data Sheets for 980 products used in natural gas production [8] and found that for more than 400 of them, manufacturers listed less than 1 percent of the product’s total composition.

“What’s there is what the product manufacturer wants you to know,” Colborn said. Without knowing all the ingredients, she said, it’s impossible to anticipate the chemical reactions that can occur as the products mix and react not only with each other but with whatever is present underground.

Volume, Concentration Are Keys

Colborn and other scientists say that knowing the concentration or volume of the individual components is also important to measure toxicity, and because various concentrations may behave differently as chemicals break down and react with others underground.

Texas, Arkansas and Wyoming, while requiring disclosure of all chemicals used, do not require companies to provide the concentrations.

The federal government regulates oil and gas drilling only on federal lands, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in November that he was considering requiring disclosure of fracking fluids for wells under federal jurisdiction. No action has been taken so far.

Some environmental groups and members of Congress have pushed for a nationwide database. Currently, drillers are not required to report fracking chemicals to the federal government unless they contain diesel, but the proposed FRAC Act [9] would require disclosure across the country.

So far, more than 40 oil and gas companies are voluntarily disclosing some of their chemicals on the FracFocus [2] website. Using the site, anyone can identify individual wells and find out the hazardous chemicals that were injected into them, including the maximum concentration at which they were used.

Mike Paque, executive director of the Ground Water Protection Council, an association of state regulators that is overseeing the site, said the organization is discussing whether to expand the disclosures to include nonhazardous chemicals. The site does not list proprietary chemicals, although it notes when they are used [10]. (See our annotated fracking disclosure form [11] for a closer look.)

Chart: States With Drilling Disclosure Rules

Five states have passed laws or administrative rules requiring drilling companies to reveal some of the chemicals they use when injecting fluids to free natural gas and oil from underground rock formations.

* Wyoming was the first state to require disclosure of fracking fluids.** Pennsylvania officials did not return calls or emails seeking clarification.*** The Texas legislature passed the law in May 2011, but state regulators have until 2013 to complete the actual rules.

Source: Reporting by Nicholas Kusnetz/ProPublica

Correction (June 24, 2011): The original version of this story misidentified Theo Colborn as a toxicologist. Colborn refers to herself as an environmental health analyst. Her doctoral work was in zoology, with a distributed curriculum in water chemistry, epidemiology and toxicology.

— Not for republication by Wyoming media.

While the nationwide trend of children spending time outdoors seems to be on a gradual decline, Wyoming shows some tentative promise.

A statewide study (PDF), conducted by the University of Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center, shows that Wyoming children spent almost twice the amount of time outside in August 2010 (3.7 hours a day) in comparison to the national average (two hours).

The survey found that most time spent outside was at home in the yard or neighborhood, doing chores, playing or participating in outdoor sports. But close behind were the 67 percent of kids who spent time in local parks. Also on the list were backpacking, hiking, camping, snow recreation, fishing, hunting, trapping and tracking.

The question of why Wyoming kids are so far ahead of the national average is more complicated to explain.

“We don’t really know all the reasons,” says Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead.

His hunch, he says, is it’s a matter of physical space – kids have an easier time getting outside when outside is vast and when there is a built-in culture of nature-based activities such as wildlife watching, fishing or hunting. And it’s a lot easier when that space is right out your backdoor.

“(Wyoming) is one great, huge playground,” he says.

But even Wyoming has its challenges.

Jack Shea, executive director of the Teton Science School in Jackson, which helped fund the study, says it’s good news that Wyoming is above the national average. But it’s not enough.

“We are slipping,” he says. “We don’t have the baseline for what it was 10 years ago, but we all know kids are probably spending less time outdoors.”

Reports like this come with a sobering reality. Yes, an average of nearly four hours outside per day sounds like a lot – until it is put into perspective. Studies by the Kaiser Family Fund show youth spend more than 7.5 hours per day – more than 53 hours per week – plugged into electronic media: computers, TVs, smart phones. A British study showed that children know more about Pokemon characters than common wildlife. Another study showed that 86 percent of nearly 800 advanced-level biology students ages 16-17 could not identify more than three common plants out of a list of 10.

And that’s only the beginning of the larger-scale problem.

Cause and Effect

Over the past decade, there has been a significant downward trend of children spending time outdoors. Richard Louv in his 2005 book, “Last Child in the Woods,” calls it the “nature deficit disorder.”

“By its broadest interpretation, nature deficit disorder is an atrophied awareness, a diminished ability to find meaning in the life that surrounds us, whatever form it takes,” Louv writes in his latest book, “The Nature Principle.” “This shrinkage of our lives has direct impact on our physical, mental and societal health.”

A report by the Children and Nature Network, which formed after the release of Louv’s book, noted that by 2008, more people lived in urban areas than the countryside; that children’s recognition of wild species continued to decline; that obesity continued to rise; and, ultimately, children’s direct experiences in nature as part of their everyday lives “remain endangered.”

Researchers are only beginning to study the links between declines in outdoor activity and various modern-day issues such as obesity, stress, ADHD, asthma, Vitamin D deficiency – the list goes on. But throughout the studies, one concept remains constant: Contact with nature, however small, is important to our health and well being.

Studies have consistently shown that time spent outdoors decreases stress and increases positive moods, creativity and achievement. For instance, University of Michigan researchers found that high schools with large windows and views of nature had higher standardized test scores, higher graduation rates, a greater percentage of students planning to attend college and fewer reports of criminal behavior.

In some parts of the world, nature is now being used as a prescription. Doctors are not only handing out pills, but trail maps, and therapists are starting patients on a course called “ecotherapy,” a treatment that exposes them to the outdoor world as part of their recovery.

Starting Young

So why does it all matter? As clichéd as it might sound, the term used by experts is “sustainable happiness.” Those who spend time outside tend to be healthier, more creative, less stressed, and ultimately happier.

But the critical link here is nature, and that link to nature starts early.

Most research indicates that adults who make a habit of spending time outdoors started that tradition as children. Their parents took them camping, or their friends took them fishing; regardless of how it happened, it was typically ingrained in them from an early age.

So perhaps the moral of the story is: Get kids outdoors and they will grow into happier adults. But somewhere along the line, that connection being lost.

In 2009, the Outdoor Foundation released a report that showed a 16.7 percent decline in outdoor participation over three years among children ages 6 to 17.

However, even with the decline in that age group, there was a general upward trend in nature-based activities. Mountain biking was up 10 percent. Trail running saw a jump of 15 percent.

At the time of its release, Christine Fanning, executive director of The Outdoor Foundation, said the interviews were conducted during the economic downturn. And when times are hard, people tend to return to their roots.

“They go back to what is simple and affordable and what feeds their soul after they have been beaten up a bit,” she said. “Nature is the one constant thing that never disappoints.”

On that front, Wyoming and the West at large seem to have something figured out when compared to the rest of the country.

The Gallup Healthways Well-Being Index (a study which asks individuals to assess their jobs, finances, physical health, emotional state of mind and communities) showed that traditionally outdoor-oriented states such as Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Washington and Montana consistently scored at the top of the list for overall well-being. Rocky Mountain States all placed within the top 20. A study of cities and towns found that Boulder, Colorado, was the happiest and healthiest in the nation and towns that scored the highest were most often located in the West.

“I think (nature) is where we’ve come from and where we tend to return when we seek comfort,” Fanning said in 2010. “I think that without nature we would be very different people, and I don’t think we would actually live very happy or healthy existences.”

But happiness isn’t the only thing to worry about, experts say. Some worry the lack of outdoor exposure is creating a learning gap. Shea says kids learn critical lessons about problem solving, creative thinking and independence when they spend time outside.

“The unintended consequences of not having this educational experience may indeed not be known by us yet,” Shea says. “Is there a possibility that the country’s slippage in innovation and other areas may relate to this?”

Others worry a decline in outdoor interest will mean those natural spaces will not be valued when this generation is in charge. And if those places are not valued, what happens when they become threatened?

Leslie Cook, a member of the Teacher Learning Center faculty at the Teton Science School, says with fewer kids in the outdoors, there may be an eventual decline in people going into natural resource jobs. Agencies like the National Park Service have expressed concern over this decline “because they worry about the brain drain that’s about to face them as a lot of their employees get ready to retire,” Cook says.

“Along with that there’s the possibility of a (decrease in) interest in conservation, visiting national parks, and people questioning whether they are valuable resources,” she says. “Worst case scenario, and it makes me nervous even to say it. But I think that’s the fear of what might happen if kids don’t have opportunities as children to experience these places.”

Shea says in a state where it is still the norm to spend time outside – where parents and grandparents still know how to play in nature and pass that down to their children – it’s important to maintain that relationship with the land.

“What worries me is we assume (Wyoming will) always going to be a state like this,” he says. “But that assumption may not be realistic unless we do some work to keep those values strengthened.”

— Not for republication by Wyoming media.

Reprinted with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net. Not for republication.

Wyoming’s recently elected Republican governor will uphold a key wildlife conservation strategy initiated by his Democratic predecessor, effectively continuing restrictions on development around greater sage grouse habitat.

Gov. Matt Mead (R) issued an executive order last week that essentially maintains 15 million acres of “core sage grouse areas” established under a 2008 directive by former Gov. Dave Freudenthal (D) and revised last summer by a task force appointed by the former governor.

The “core area” strategy is designed mostly to protect sage grouse breeding grounds called “leks,” where even minor disruptions can cause the birds to flee their nests. Under the policy, any development within a 4-mile radius of a lek cannot disturb more than 5 percent of the total surface area.

Some were concerned that when Freudenthal left office in January, Mead might abandon the core area strategy that has been endorsed by wildlife advocacy groups and federal regulators.

“I believe this effort, which started almost a decade ago, represents the most significant conservation measure ever undertaken by a state in support of protecting a species,” Mead said in a statement. “There is an active effort to have the sage grouse listed [as a federally protected species], but this order reflects a state effort to develop a compromise acceptable to all sides.”

Mead’s order directs that the core areas “should not be altered” for at least five years. He also upheld a separate Freudenthal order establishing a designated corridor for new electricity transmission lines through southern Wyoming that limits impacts to sage grouse habitat.

“It’s great news,” said Brian Rutledge, executive director of Audubon Wyoming and a member of the task force that drew the original core area boundaries. “We’ve got those who will claim this is not enough, but you show me anywhere else in the world where they’ve got a 5 percent disturbance limit on 15 million acres?”

Protecting greater sage grouse has become a top priority in Wyoming after the Fish and Wildlife Service last year designated the bird a “candidate” for Endangered Species Act protection. FWS has praised the core area strategy, noting that more than half the world’s remaining grouse reside in Wyoming, and roughly 80 percent of those birds live in a core area.

In a statement, Mead said he would continue the Freudenthal policy, but added: “This is not an action I take lightly or without reservation.”

But, he added, abandoning the “core areas” policy could trigger an ESA listing, which in turn would usher in new land-use restrictions that “could cripple the economy of our state.”

However, as a goodwill gesture to developers that are directly affected by the sage grouse policy, Mead called for devising incentives for those firms that pursue development projects outside core sage grouse areas. The order also adds flexibility if future research suggests grouse are less sensitive to development than currently thought.

Mixed reviews

By tweaking the order, Mead hopes to continue Wyoming’s proactive efforts on behalf of grouse without alienating the state’s oil and gas and renewable energy sectors, both of which face development obstacles as they navigate around grouse-rich areas.

Such challenges have been particularly hard for the state’s burgeoning wind-power industry, which has homed in on southern Wyoming as a development hot spot. While Wyoming has some of the nation’s greatest wind resources, the state currently ranks only 10th for total installed wind power capacity, at 1,400 megawatts, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Adding to that number will require carefully working around the core grouse areas.

But Mead’s order seeks to reassure developers that the current policy could change as more is learned about the effects of wind farms on grouse. “Wind development is not recommended in sage-grouse core areas,” according to the order, “but will he reevaluated on a continuous basis as new science, information and data emerges.

Cheryl Riley, executive director of the Wyoming Power Producers Coalition, a Cheyenne-based trade group of independent wind developers, said she welcomed that provision. “If the science can show that sage grouse and wind energy are compatible, it won’t necessarily preclude [future] wind power development in the core areas,” Riley said.

But others questioned the wisdom of extending a policy that they believe doesn’t go far enough to protect grouse.

Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist with the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie, Wyo., said the core areas policy has too many loopholes that allow development to encroach upon grouse habitat.

For example, Molvar said the state has allowed oil, natural gas and wind developers to plan and build projects in core areas, and to mitigate the impacts by purchasing other land that is only of marginal value to the grouse. This in essence allows the state to redraw the boundaries of the core areas to accommodate development.

“Every time a major industrial project is proposed for a core area habitat, the core area boundaries get magically shifted so those core area stipulations do not apply,” Molvar said. “If they keep shifting the boundaries of the core areas every time a major industrial project is proposed, then the core area protections don’t mean very much.”

But Renny MacKay, a spokesman for Mead, said the state is not trying to alter the core boundaries, nor is it trying to accommodate energy developers by giving away critical grouse habitat. Rather, the state is trying to balance the needs of developers and landowners with the need to protect the grouse.

“This isn’t the perfect plan,” MacKay said of the core area strategy. “It’s hard on everyone. There are people on all sides who are struggling with it.”

Click here to read Mead’s executive order.

Scott Streater writes from Colorado Springs, Colo.

As I write this, I am aware of the pistol I often carry in my pickup, the 10-gauge shotgun leaning against the wall in my bedroom and my 15 or so hunting rifles, shotguns, black powder replicas and revolvers in the gun room.

I was born and raised in Newcastle with guns in my hand as soon as I showed the responsibility and judgment to handle them. My grandmother, who homesteaded in Crook County in 1910, and my father, a Wyoming attorney for over 40 years, taught me about the use of firearms. They taught me that a bullet fired from a gun is absolutely irreversible.

Because of this, my grandmother taught that it is the absolute responsibility of someone using or carrying a gun to care for the safety, concerns and sensitivities of those around him. This is just an application of the golden rule. Lest you think Grandma Fern was just some touchy-feely sentimentalist, she taught country schools in her 60s, living alone in the mountains outside Douglas. There, with her always, was her ancient .22 rifle and she was absolutely an expert in its use.

My father served in the Army and in courtrooms when life was literally on the line. Neither of these mentors of mine would have dreamed of carrying a firearm to a courtroom or to get a vehicle license or to a meeting of the city council, the county commissioners or the planning board.

Doug Dumbrill

For my grandmother, it would have simply been unforgivably bad manners, but for my father it would have been a betrayal of deep respect for the processes of a democratic republic. You see, my father didn’t see the law as he wished it was. He saw it as it really was and as it must be. This is what I’d like to bring to the debate about guns in government buildings.

First, contrary to what has been stated over and over by gun rights advocates, the state of Wyoming did not completely forbid any gun regulation but theirs. Quite the contrary, the statute on this actually begins with a very important exception which recognizes that cities have important concerns when it comes to guns. The statute says:

“Except as authorized by W.S. 15-1-103(a)(xviii), no city, town, county, political subdivision or any other entity shall authorize, regulate or prohibit the … ownership … or ammunition.”

Often in the law, the exception defines the rule so here is what cities are legally authorized by that exception to do:

“Regulate, prevent or suppress riots, disturbances, disorderly assemblies or parades or any other conduct which disturbs or jeopardizes the public health, safety, peace or morality in any public or private place.”

The Legislature has without question left cities with a very broad power to legislate with regard to firearms and the inherent danger to safety, health and public peace which they present. It is important to note that this power reserved to the cities is not just remedial but preventative.

The city can act to “prevent” disturbance. The city can “regulate” conduct which “jeopardizes” “safety” or “peace.” “Peace” here is meant as the legal “peace,” that is “a state of public tranquility.” It is broad enough to encompass the operation of the city government in a safe and civil fashion.

In an important and welcome recent U.S. Supreme Court case, District of Columbia v. Heller, the court found that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is an individual right (that is, not tied to being part of a militia). This is a very important, and to my mind, correct decision. But, in this very decision, the Supreme Court also said:

“… nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.”

In the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court declared the right to keep and bear arms “fundamental,” and applied it to all the states of the union. I think that a positive step was made for protection of the right. But again, that’s not the whole story on the issue before residents in Gillette and other Wyoming towns.

The Supreme Court said in the McDonald decision that even this fundamental right is not: “… a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever, in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

When, as recently occurred in Newcastle, openly armed groups appear at city council meetings to argue the dog ordinance (really) or at county commission meetings to oppose land-use planning, what is the purpose of carrying the firearm?

They are packing to intimidate elected officials into seeing things their way and to keep opposing voices from speaking out. Even if that’s not the subjective reason, it is the clear effect.

In the course of my 30-year legal career, I have been in courtrooms where, had firearms been present among the litigants, they would certainly have been used. There have been council and commission meetings that were equally heated. It only has to happen once and you can never have it back.

It seems to me that it is completely worthwhile, in light of new strengthened firearms rights, to think about our responsibilities over government buildings as “sensitive places,” places where we can speak our minds and do our business without worrying about whether the pistol needs to go inside or can just stay under the seat for the next trip to the country.

We spent a long time growing out of our “Dodge City” phase. We should, and we are legally empowered to, discuss whether we want to go back.

Doug Dumbrill, a former Gillette police officer, is an attorney in Gillette.

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A few weeks ago, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department issued a press release with pointers on how one should behave in the presence of sage grouse during the bird’s mating season.

Department officials likely want to err on the side of caution, because after reading the agency’s lek-viewing recommendations, you’d think sage grouse are a timid and frail bird rather than the determined and often goofy creatures I’ve come to know.

A lek is the area where sage grouse — both roosters and hens — congregate in the spring to pair up and mate. Drumming is the term given for the males’ semi-ridiculous (if you’re not a sage grouse rooster) technique to attract females and, if the male is lucky, to have the female stick around long enough for the two of them to mate and produce more grouse. Sometimes, the hens will stand in groups of two or three and check out the boys for a while, then wander away.

The Game and Fish Department suggests you:

• Arrive at the lek one hour before sunrise (assuming you can find the lek in the dark).
• Do not park on or near the lek.
• Stay in your vehicle with the lights and engine off and the doors shut (be sure to open the windows so you can see and hear better).
• Do not to make sudden or loud noises.
• Do not leave the lek until the birds leave.
• Keep your pets in your vehicle (possibly violating the sudden or loud noise rule) or leave them at home.
• Do not trespass on private land.

And finally, wildlife officials suggest, “Late April is the best time to visit because most breeding is complete by then but the males are still actively strutting.”

The females are already in the ho-hum stage, watching and walking away when a male blows up the water balloon-type bags on his chest and slaps those big balloons together. There must be something about the sage grouse males which only the sage grouse females understand — otherwise, one would wonder how any breeding would occur, instead of paroxysms of laughter.

These all sound like sensible rules, but let me tell you my experience.

My husband and I hit the road a little late, as per usual. We haven’t taken any dogs with us because they were still sleeping, and would no doubt insist on getting out of their crates the moment we parked.

Driving south from Gillette, we spy the sign for the turnoff about the time we’ve come to the conclusion that we’ve missed the turnoff. We use coal-bed methane buildings as our guide posts, but since it’s a year since the last lek trip, we’re never quite sure where the lek is until we’re in the middle of it.

The grouse couldn’t care less that we are there. Just think — you’re a young, virile guy, ready to show the ladies your stuff, and all these beautiful girls are hanging around, and a truck drives up in the middle of your action. You may wave the truck on, but more likely, you’re just going to flat-out ignore it.

The first time I went to a particular lek, however, we were not ignored. One grouse apparently felt some attraction to our bumper. He got closer and closer, strutting the whole time, until we could no longer see him because he was too close to us; we had no idea where he ended up. We were the ones laughing then. And since the birds had appeared all around us, binoculars and scopes were not necessary, especially as the sky began to brighten to the east.

We have generally waited for the birds to leave the lek, but if you are visiting the site on an overcast day, the strutting may go on a good long time, in which case we start the car and drive slowly, slowly over the hill, only to find a few more grouse there.

We have never hit a grouse, nor seem to annoy them in any way — they just pretend we’re not there. And as the sky becomes full light, they vanish as if in a mist.

Find a lek and try to follow the rules, even though I’ve poked fun at them. A strutting sage grouse is quite the thing to see.

Kate Missett has lived in Wyoming since 1961. She has been a writer/editor since high school.

Guest Column By Edwin Bender

The promise of the developing transparency movement in this country is greater accountability of our elected officials.

Embedded in that promise is a hope for more openness,  greater efficiency, and accountability in how lawmakers and government officials care for the public’s interests and spend taxpayer money, and combat corruption.

When U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis made his famous statement—”sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants”—in 1913, he was focused on the corrupting influence of major corporations and monopolies in all aspects of American life.

(Jeff Parker/Florida Today — click to enlarge)

It’s now nearly a century later, and in many ways the promise of transparency is being refined, enabled by the Internet and ever-expanding troves of data. Watchdog groups and new media outlets are mixing and matching different types of information to tell the story of how our electoral system affects our public policy process and how our tax money is spent.

Call it sunlight rebooted. I’m sure Brandeis would approve.

But, for all the good work done over the past two decades by groups like the Center for Responsive Politics, the National Institute on Money in State Politics, Project Vote Smart, the Center for Public Integrity, and others, we understand that we’ve just scraped the surface of what is possible.

The Center for Public Integrity’s recent work with the Wall Street Journal to examine the Medicare claims database for patterns of fraud and abuse is a glaring example of how access to basic data can save the taxpayers millions, by revealing where abuses appear to be prevalent.

Texas launched an expenditures database for vendors and purchases in 2007.

Comptroller Susan Combs reported to Governing magazine in May 2009 (“See-Thru Government,” by Ellen Perlman) that the state had found $4.2 million in “efficiencies,” or potential savings, simply by combining all state spending into one database and looking for patterns.The promise is real. But it isn’t easy.

(Deb Milbrath)

The National Institute on Money in State Politics (FollowTheMoney.org) takes on a Herculean task, compiling campaign-finance data from all 50 states, which have 50 different sets of laws, 50 different disclosure agencies, 50 reporting requirements, and 50 report formats. Despite the obstacles, the Institute’s efforts have resulted in a database of more than 19 million records chronicling $16 billion in contributions. Combining that with official lobbyist registrations from all 50 states reveals the types of patterns that tell voters when a group’s legislative activities reveal it is trying to protect itself over the public’s best interest.

The Institute and other watchdog groups that harvest public data understand the power of accurate information, and put it on the Web, open-source, for others to innovate with. We also understand that data is just a tool. It needs a curious, determined individual or group to put it in context, which gives it value.

While the promise of transparency is a more accountable democracy and efficient government—and it is a promise that can be realized—it will only happen when citizens and voters pick up the tool and put it to good use.

Only then will the sunlight reboot be complete.

Edwin Bender is executive director of the National Institute on Money in State Politics. The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization collects and analyzes campaign contribution information on state-level candidates, political party committees, and ballot committees. Explore the free, searchable database of contributions online at FollowTheMoney.org.

Guest Column By Dan Neal

Somebody lied on the way to changing Wyoming law governing the creation of election districts for county commissioners.

The story begins last spring, when U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson ruled in favor of five Native American plaintiffs who challenged Fremont County’s system of electing county commissioners at-large. The plaintiffs successfully argued that the system violates the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Native Americans.

Judge Johnson found that Native Americans, specifically members of the tribes of the Wind River Reservation, have been victimized by historic and continuing racial discrimination in Fremont County. The county’s at-large system of voting denied them access to the institutional power through which they could address this racism.

Dan Neal

The county’s initial response to losing the lawsuit was to offer a districting plan with a majority Native American district to elect one commissioner, and an at-large district to elect the other four commissioners. These districts were rejected by Judge Johnson because they “perpetuate the separation, isolation and racial polarization in the county, guaranteeing that the non-Indian majority continues to cancel out the voting strength of the minority.”

Under federal court order, Fremont County then drew five single-member county commissioner districts and held the first elections in three of them in January (the other two commissioners were carried over and will be up for election in 2012).

Meanwhile, Fremont County also appealed the decision – at taxpayer expense – and the matter is now pending before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The county also turned to the Joint Interim Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee last year. In September, the county asked the committee to approve a new law that would allow the hybrid districting plans.

When the bill, SF 14 – Counties – election districts, was proposed, tribal leaders argued the county would use it to try to influence the appeals court. The Equality State Policy Center opposed SF 14 due to the potential for using hybrid districting to discriminate not only in Fremont County but in other areas of the state where there are geographical concentrations of minority populations.

But since last fall, the chairmen of the Senate and House Corporations committees repeatedly assured their committee members, witnesses, and the public that SF 14 would have no effect on Fremont County’s appeal. It was clear to observers at the interim meetings that members of the committees also supported the bill only as forward-looking, rather than anything that could or should affect the appeal.

The statements from the chairmen, Sen. Cale Case (R-Lander) and Rep. Pete Illoway (R-Cheyenne), undercut objections to the bill voiced by the tribes of the Wind River Reservation and the Equality State Policy Center. The bill passed.

“We are not messing with the court decision,” Case said in a WyoFile report on the bill. “This just grants counties more flexibility.”

After the Legislature passed the bill, the ESPC explained its concerns to Gov. Matt Mead and met with two of his legal advisors in an effort to secure a veto of the bill. The governor declined, however, and signed the bill Feb. 24.

Both Chairman Case and and Chairman Illoway said they were surprised by the news that the county’s attorney at the Mountain States Legal Foundation had notified the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals about Wyoming’s new law.

The attorney wrote to the court, stating the new law “may have a bearing on what the state could allow with respect to remedying violations of the federal Voting Rights Act by drafting new county commission districts,” Associated Press reporter Ben Neary reported in a story published in the Casper Star-Tribune.

DISMANTLING RACISM

Judge Johnson dismantled a classic racist structure when he ordered the end of the at-large voting system in Fremont County’s commission elections. The ESPC consistently argued that the hybrid districting bill erects another structure that easily can be co-opted to impose a replacement racist structure. Counties can use this law to quarantine a minority population in a district of its own while the rest of a county population continues to elect the majority of members of a county commission.

Fremont County officials have made obvious their intention to do as much as they can to maintain a status quo the court found guilty of racism. The county’s action in front of the appeals court reaffirms that intent. It’s time for Fremont County and the entire state to move beyond the racism that has plagued relations with the tribes.

If this is how the county commissions of Wyoming will use the new districting law, it should be repealed.

Dan Neal is executive director of the Equality State Policy Center, a broad-based coalition of Wyoming interests, works through research, public education and advocacy to hold state and local governments accountable to the people they represent, and to help Wyomingites participate effectively in public policymaking.

It may be time, as U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., suggests, to “declare a cease-fire in the war on red, white and blue jobs.” But maybe we should ask who really is waging that war, and how do those jobs stand to be lost?

In the last three years, more than 100 coal-fired power plants have been canceled or shut down. This is not happening because coal has become more expensive. Indeed, coal remains by far the cheapest form of electric power production. Yet electric power utilities are abandoning it despite its low cost. They recognize that future markets for electric power will reward producers who switch to wind and natural gas as preferred low-carbon energy sources.

That is hardly the picture drawn by Sen. Barrasso: “Any shift to an alternative energy economy should occur because the people decide that alternative energy is better, not because Washington has made every other form of energy too expensive.” Electric utilities are not being driven away from coal because Washington has made it too expensive. They are abandoning it because, under current policy conditions, they already see these alternative forms of energy as a “better” investment, in anticipation of shifting public preferences for energy sources.

What would it take to change this calculation? Owners of coal-fired power plants would have to see some advantage in installing new carbon emission reduction technologies (such as carbon capture and storage), in order to level the playing field in carbon emissions with alternative sources of energy. Given the current state of public policy, there is no such advantage to be gained, because of the high capital costs of these technologies.

But what if, for example, Congress were to impose a price penalty for the emission of carbon dioxide? Owners of coal-fired power plants would then have no choice but to install these new technologies or go out of business. How would they pay for this added investment? Clearly, by passing its cost onto the consumer.

But that’s okay. Coming back to the issue of red, white and blue energy jobs, the question is: Are we as consumers willing to make the patriotic sacrifice of paying this added price? If we decide we are, we can buy more time to develop not only better, but also less expensive, sources of alternative energy. At the same time, we can increase our energy security by continuing to draw on our most abundant domestic fossil fuel source — coal — in an environmentally friendly way.

It is this reluctance to concede the potential role of patriotism in promoting U.S. energy security and a cleaner environment which, in my view, poses the greatest threat to America’s red, white and blue jobs. What are red, white and blue jobs, if not those jobs that are made possible by patriotic sacrifice? And what does that mean — at least in the electric power sector so important to Wyoming — if not paying a higher price for power?

Does that mean we need to call in the EPA to get the job done? Of course not. Regulation by EPA is a reversion to the old “command-and-control” approach to environmental protection. That approach served us well in the 1970s, when many landmark environmental laws were passed. But it is also the least cost-effective method of environmental management. As a response to today’s environmental challenges, it makes sense for Sen. Barrasso to oppose it.

To get the job of environmental protection done in a cost-effective way that creates jobs and conserves resources, these days, we need to look to the market. That entails setting the proper price signals, and then letting industry do what it does best — figure out how to get the job done. For all its shortcomings, that’s what a cap-and-trade approach to controlling carbon emissions was all about. To call EPA’s current approach a backdoor cap-and-trade scheme is to divert attention from the real challenge: to find ways to reduce carbon emissions without imposing regulations.

Right now, there are technologies being developed at the University of Wyoming’s School of Energy Resources which hold great promise for the reduction of carbon emissions from coal and other fossil energy sources. The problem is that these technologies are not being deployed — and that is a problem of public policy, not technology.

We need to take policy steps soon to provide incentives for the electric power industry to make the necessary investments to bring these technologies to market. Until we do so, red, white and blue energy jobs will continue to languish for lack of patriotic sacrifice, and America’s energy future will continue to be held hostage to those whose fossil fuel reserves are greater than ours.

David Wendt is president of The Jackson Hole Center for Global Affairs.

RELATED STORY — Sen. John Barrasso: Time to Put Brakes on EPA’s Runaway Bureaucrats

How to best preserve American jobs, protect the environment and reduce the country’s dependence on foreign sources of fossil fuels is the subject of two views — one from U.S. Sen. John Barrasso and the other from David Wendt, president of The Jackson Hole Center for Global Affairs.

Sen. John Barrasso: Time to Put Brakes on EPA’s Runaway Bureaucrats

I recently introduced the “Defending America’s Affordable Energy and Jobs Act (S.228).” This legislation puts the brakes on Washington’s efforts to institute job-crushing carbon regulations. It is a rebuke that unelected bureaucrats badly need.

The Defending America’s Affordable Energy and Jobs Act will block all federal authorities from regulating greenhouse gases without express approval from Congress. It puts an end to any grounds for legal action regarding climate change under the Clean Water Act, NEPA, the Endangered Species Act or federal tort law generally. CONTINUE READING

David Wendt: Saving Red, White & Blue Energy Jobs

It may be time, as U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., suggests, to “declare a cease-fire in the war on red, white, and blue jobs.” But maybe we should ask who really is waging that war, and how do those jobs stand to be lost?

In the last three years, more than 100 coal-fired power plants have been canceled or shut down. This is not happening because coal has become more expensive. Indeed, coal remains by far the cheapest form of electric power production. Yet electric power utilities are abandoning it despite its low cost. They recognize that future markets for electric power will reward producers who switch to wind and natural gas as preferred low-carbon energy sources. CONTINUE READING