Wyoming is sitting on a wealth of opportunity. We have abundant natural resources, well-established core industries and room to grow. Many other states do not have these same prospects. We are small, but that allows us to be nimble. We are one of the last places in the U.S. where an enterprising company can build a new industry from the ground up. We can build new things without the burden of having to tear down what came before. We are fresh ground.
Opinion
Despite this advantage, we risk squandering our chances. We have become too focused on recreating the past at the expense of building the future. Historically, our strength has come from our willingness to say yes to opportunities. Recently, however, we have seen too many in our communities and in our leadership who would stop anything that benefits the next generation out of fear that it might upset their comfortable status quo. They do not care about building a legacy; instead, they are focused on maintaining what they already have. It is a short-sighted viewpoint.
The most glaring example of this is the recent decision by Radiant Nuclear to abandon its proposal to build a manufacturing facility in Bar Nunn. The reception this company got from some segments of our state was shocking in its hostility. By showing the company that they were unwelcome, the naysayers cost their community a potentially valuable new industry. Where would Wyoming be if these people were here in the 1970s? Wyoming coal was a small industry then, and national market changes led to rapid development, often in difficult circumstances. Had our current attitude prevailed then, Wyoming coal may never have gotten off the ground, and our state would be far worse because of it.
If Wyoming is going to be anything more than a place for more prosperous states to get their raw materials, we must be open to new opportunities and industries. Our world does not stay static. It changes by the day including the industries that make our society work. Wyoming in the early 1900s was dominated by the agricultural industry. By the late 1900s, resource extraction led our state’s economy. In this new century, we must choose to take advantage of what comes next. Be it new energy, data and computing, advanced manufacturing or something else entirely, we must recognize that the Wyoming of a century ago is not the Wyoming of today. We should love our past, appreciate it and recognize that it is where we came from, not where we are going.
Many wish that Wyoming would not change. Most of us live here because we have chosen it. We love it as much for its hardships as its benefits, and many are uncomfortable with the possibility that the things we have always associated with our state may be replaced. We must remember, however, that we are a frontier state. The people who came here did so because it was a land of opportunity. We did not have “legacy” industries to fall back on. They came here because it was a place that valued growth, building something great and an entrepreneurial spirit. I fear we are losing the spirit of our heritage by focusing too much on what they built rather than on what we can build.
Today, there are many opportunities that our state could take advantage of. Alternative energy production would be well-suited to Wyoming, if we welcome it. Data centers are already a blossoming industry in some parts of the state and have the potential to inject millions of dollars into our communities through both employee salaries and tax revenue. Our workforce is well-suited to advanced manufacturing, as evidenced by companies like Maven, Weatherby and others intentionally locating themselves in Wyoming. Each of these has the potential to transform our communities for the better, but we must remember that transformation inherently means change. Our state will not look the same in the future, sometimes literally. Each new industry will bring with it opportunities and challenges. Nevertheless, we must be willing to take those challenges on.
Wyoming is not a place stuck in time. We are not immune to the outside world’s impact. We cannot keep Wyoming the way it used to be, because the things that drove that world are no longer the same. Our state’s history is full of people who came here to build something new. Our heritage is based on seizing opportunities. Let’s focus on that part of who we are, so that the Wyoming of tomorrow is just as good as the Wyoming of yesterday.
Forty years ago Wyoming had an opportunity to be a major player in the nuclear power industry. Instead the “nimbys” of the world lost the opportunity of a life time and the millions, if not billions, of dollars that went with it.
Well said.
With that said, I would posit that the Party that is Khale’s, drove people to vote for it was based on a “fear” model that has the “chickens coming home to roost”. I sent an email to Senator Cooper after he admonished the Wyoming electorate over fear of the future and I pointed out that he helped create that culture by being afraid of letting women citizens decide how to manage their own wombs or worrying about the damn bathroom. Same with crime as the world has gotten significantly better since 1990, but the electorate does not know it or believe it even as it is a fact, so much so, that US citizens bought 290 million guns since that date. Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my.
Fear is the basis of Republican power and the business community is finding out how detrimental that choice has become as cutting taxes doesn’t help if there is declining income.
If the only opportunity is nuclear, we’re better off without it. The people of Wyoming have historically been against nuclear waste storage, and that’s the right way of thinking. I believe that newcomers want to change that because they really don’t care about Wyoming, they just want a tax free haven.
Nuclear is not the only opportunity and those “fearing” it should look at how well they actually cared about their environment in the first place. Coal ash is an exempted hazardous waste that is polluting our State without our State getting revenue or laws forcing clean up. Neurotoxins in the air and water seem to have caused more problems than nuclear so far but we are not stopping or even regulating that very well.
This country should have never let the capitalists running coal fired plants take on nuclear as it has been a disaster. The French chose a much more rigorous and socialist model that allows them to produce 83% of their electricity from that product, safely. Of course the French do not have coal, oil or much gas so they may not be subject to the fear of nuclear that coal industry puts into the American psyche.
I have no love for coal and nuclear is great- until it isn’t .
Khale Lenhart is spot on. It seems to have started back in 2015. I was running for county commissioner running on economic development. My opponents in a voters meeting that I attended got up after I spoke and said the wanted to keep things just like it was. I got enough votes that had every Democrat that was registered to vote, I would have had every one of their votes plus a thousand more votes that had to be Republican votes. I still lost. Oil and gas had left Evanston and closed their offices in Evanston. Our economy sucked. There were no jobs and little housing. I had served nine years on the Uinta County Economic Development Board and every time a company wanted to come to Evanston the County Commissioners nixed it. We had two hundred and thirty windmills that wanted to come to Evanston. They had put in transmission lines between Evanston windmills and Bridger Valley. They had passed all the state requirements. They had added to the windmill infrastructure. I was in the meeting the day that the company president asked the county commissioners for their support. That day all three of the commissioners zoned out the additional windmills. The company president explained all the benefit it be to the county’s economy and all the things they had done and the costs it took them to get to where they had all their monkeys in a row. They still wouldn’t change their mind. The company president was irate and so frustrated that he said he would make sure that there was never again another windmill installed in Uinta County and since then Rocky Mountain power was going build additional windmills and for some reason back down. Eastern Wyoming just nixed having a nuclear plant. Bill Gates wants to put a nuclear plant near Kemmerer. Kemmerer didn’t want it, and I am wondering if it too has been killed. I heard a internet company wanted to put in a plant in Evanston but now wonder what happened there. We had a vibrant tourism trade in Evanston. We sponsored dog sled racing and bicycle racing and the mayor fired the person would worked on bring them in. We had plans for an events center and did all the work to get it. A hundred-thousand-dollar study was taken and it said it was viable. They re-routed the entrance to the information, put in an entrance to the center. and drilled water wells to provide water to the center. Then the county commissioners backed out. Wyoming doesn’t want development and provide energy to the rest of the nation but doesn’t want to develop it so they use the energy instead of sending out of state. The Freedom Caucus has hamstrung Wyoming legislators while trying to get the airplane contrails band from Wyoming. They don’t want airplanes flying over Wyoming airspace. I gave up and am now living in Colorado.
Who among us has the courage to have a long overdue heart-to-heart talk with the Wyoming Stockgrowers to inform them they no longer preside over the state of Wyoming ? The 19th century’s sectarian Code of the West and the Cowboy Way no longer impart the wisdom and apptitude necessary for a 21st century digital culture where cattle are no longer sacred cows.
Following that , who will deliver the panegyric for crude oil petroleum’s mortal decline ; the lamentation as we watch coal mining wither away ?
Those are but preludes to the real task at hand: Somebody has to take that gawdfersaken Wyoming Freedom Caucus to the woodshed for some extracurriculate education on why they need to get the ‘H’ out of the way…
I agree with this in principle, but if one reviews what is actually happening our current WYO leaders keep looking in the past instead of where we’re going. Giving tax breaks to already wealthy property owners, propping up a coal industry that is on the decline (and refusing to accept that it is declining — carbon capture has not proven to be realistic), propping up oil and gas companies by giving breaks, local leaders passing restrictive rules that favor current existing local businesses while impeding new businesses, giving breaks to ag/ranchers, cutting funding for schools, proposing laws for problems that don’t really exist (voting restrictions, jet exhaust contrails, library restrictions, proposing laws to regulate woman’s health, bathroom laws, etc. — all cultural outrage not real problems) to just name a few.
The freedom caucus leadership consistently looks and yearns for the past instead of promoting ideas that are innovative and proposals for the future. A mayor in eastern WY that states he’d rather have a coal/gas fossil fuel plant than welcoming renewables, etc. When a new business idea is proposed do our civic leaders actually look at it with open minds, or scoff and deride? Review the actual actions; what do the leaders promote and what do they say. Where is the WY republican party and freedom caucus getting their direction from and what is goal?
The current WYO freedom caucus members sure seem to be focused on short term gains and willing to forgo long term innovation and sustainability. How many times have we heard the “frankly I don’t care how you did it where you came from that’s they way we’ve always done it here and …..” line. That sure comes across as a open and welcoming line to others who propose new ideas.
Like it or not there’s a reason why the economies of surrounding states like CO and UT are growing quickly while in WY we seem to be treading water. What are they doing that we are not? Is our state leadership and local community leaders willing to really look in the mirror and see why this is occurring? Refusing acknowledge that we have to evaluate, course correct, and ultimately change will keep us on a path of constriction.
In my 35 plus years of living in WY all I can remember is our leaders ALWAYS looking to the past instead of planning for the future. Short term responses instead of long term solutions for our future generations. Those leaders that planned for the future 50 plus years ago with severance taxes would run out on a rail in our current state legislative body. They were creative, innovative leaders that were thinking of the future, something we seem to lack today.
Khale Lenhart writes for Wyoming, not for a political party. Over the last couple years his vision has seen through the morass of favoritism and exclusionism the current legislature uses to carve it’s brutish way. He does it without the knife of bitterness.
What resonates is both the constance and maturing of his vision. He would be a perfect leader for Wyoming conservatism.
Well said. The anti nuke crowd is very good at spreading fear. Exceptionally good at it. They started years ago and have honed their skills with the same money and lawyers the environmental groups use.
One cannot blame Radiant for pulling out. They knew that the local political environment would be driven by the fear mongering anti nuke groups. An opportunity missed and that is sad.
Wind turbines cause cancer and kill all the birds right?
Do you count yourself amongst the fear mongers?