This summer, the Biden administration offered Wyoming $35 million to help the state plug and clean up abandoned oil and gas wells. When Wyoming turned down the cash, it seemed hard to believe.
Opinion
It could cost the state more than twice that amount to reclaim its 1,000 or so defunct wells that remain unplugged. Economists have also warned that market forces will continue to diminish the state’s main revenue source — severance taxes on fossil fuels.
That’s not all. Last year, Wyoming turned down federal money for electric vehicle charging stations. Then, when Gov. Mark Gordon refused to take part in the Environmental Protection Agency’s pollution reduction program, the state lost tens of millions of dollars in federal funding.
Meanwhile, the state is spending millions of taxpayer dollars on lawsuits seeking to eviscerate Biden administration rules aimed at protecting the environment and human health and mitigating harmful effects of climate change.
It’s all part of a disturbing shift among Western Republicans and the states they dominate. They are veering away from the more pragmatic conservatism of Teddy Roosevelt or even Ronald Reagan, and into the hard right, anti-government quagmire.
Wyoming’s governor has been swept up in this shift. Gordon was born in New York City and grew up on the family ranch in Kaycee. He registered as a Republican at age 18, attended Vermont’s Middlebury College, then came back to Wyoming to continue ranching. At the same time, he pushed back on the coalbed-methane drilling boom that was ravaging his state, a fact missing from his official biographies.
Gordon’s activism included serving on environmental groups’ boards and he went on record attacking the energy industry for turning Buffalo into “the place that stinks on the way to Casper.” Nevertheless, he later worked for an oil company as its conservation director.
He still straddled the fence politically, donating to both Republican and Democratic candidates and committees on a state and national level during the 1990s and early 2000s. But he was not an anomaly; this sort of ideological flexibility was once common in Western states.
When Gordon ran for Congress as a moderate in 2008, he said both the Republican Party and the Sierra Club had “gotten off track,” with the GOP moving too far to the right and abandoning Roosevelt-style conservationism. He said environmentalists also became less willing to compromise, particularly on public-land grazing issues.
Gordon lost that 2008 primary to hardliner Cynthia Lummis — now a U.S. senator — after she attacked him for his environmental ties and bipartisan tendencies. But Gordon stuck to his relatively moderate stance when he ran for governor in 2018 and defeated hardliner Harriet Hageman — who would later unseat Liz Cheney from Wyoming’s lone seat in U.S. House.
As governor, Gordon has acknowledged human-caused climate change and supported clean-energy development, while also looking to keep the fossil fuel industry afloat by pushing carbon capture rather than closing coal plants or regulating drilling.
He was forceful and eloquent in condemning the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, tweeting: “Interfering with the peaceful transfer of power is an affront to the very Constitution that has made our country what it is. I believe America will not — cannot — stand for this assault on our democracy.”
This centrism has played well with voters. Gordon easily won a second term in 2022. But the radical right-wing, climate-denying branch of Wyoming’s Legislature, the Freedom Caucus, has relentlessly blasted him for it.
In purple states, such as Arizona, the radicalization of the GOP has been met with backlash from moderates, who can seek refuge in a growing Democratic Party. But in Wyoming, newcomers fleeing more liberal states are turning the Legislature a deeper shade of red, lending power and members to the Freedom Caucus.
The Wyoming governor has struggled to hold his ground. His rhetoric on Biden’s purported “war on fossil fuels” — and the state’s legal challenges to common-sense environmental protections — have grown more strident, even though Gordon knows full well that market forces, not regulations, are behind the industries’ decline.
The intent here is not to heap criticism on Gordon; he gets enough of that from his party members. Rather it is to lament the imminent extinction of the moderate, conservation-leaning, pragmatic Western Republican.
Think of all those missed opportunities. In today’s political climate, Gordon either must adapt or be thrown out of office, and that’s not good for Wyoming or the West.
This is the crazy world we live in now. One where people actually argue that there is no way to figure out what is factual and truthful. There is a method to do this and it can be a lengthy process, but well worth it in the end. This also a world where one very disturbed man is deciding what is the truth and what is not and whole bunch of politicians are going along with it because they want to maintain their power so badly. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Mr. Thompson, your “Join the Conversation” and its ground rules disincline me to participate. Here’s why. I am a retired Professor of Political Science and History, Ph.D. in the former, ABD in the latter. The absurd phenomenon of calling people “Fact Checkers” has gotten completely out of control. If I was teaching about the American Revolution for example I could give you the dates of when the battles of Lexington and Concord occurred. But aside from that, everything else about what happened there is conjecture and there is widespread disagreement about who was at fault. Now we have (nearly exclusively) people on the Left that think they “own facts.” Is there a degree in facts? I can tell you as someone who has studied the methodology of social sciences such as Political Science, and also History which is in the Humanities, it is Prima Facie absurd to say that some Left Wing 20 or 30 something year old with a BA owns the facts. What I know from a 38 year career in academics is that if you tow the line you get promoted. If you don’t you either never do, or in many cases are fired, even with tenure. There are in fact many very highly skilled and much published climate skeptics, but you’d never know it because both the academy and media have bonded to create a “Censorship – Industrial – Complex. If you reward those who follow the climate alarmists, you are rewarded, regaled, if you point out problems, you are slandered and your career either suffers or ends. Fact – Checking is pseudonym for censorship and repression and “anti-science” in which inquiry (the actual scientific method) is abjured. Not only are many of the climate change facts, not facts, but the conclusion drawn from these non-facts lead to remedies are more harmful than the alleged crisis.
Pretending that facts aren’t possible to find is preposterous. Video, first hand accounts, corroborating witnesses, proof validated by forensic investigation are all valid means of ferreting out truth. Best example is the January 6th insurrection. Many followers of the 2020 presidential election loser in Chief still claim it was a peaceful protest. We watched as that happened. The facts are irrefutable. Same with the 2020 election. Followers of the cult still believe the election was subverted. Not one shred of evidence, not factual. Period. Brushing off facts because you don’t believe them doesn’t change the truth. Facts matter.
WHO left the abandoned wells unplugged? Federal $ are certainly the MOST nonsensical definition of public indebtedness. Grants are simply debt largely inflated by administrative costs, again public debt.
That was wise choice in rejecting federal money. States are too dependent on federal monies. Than Feds have to much control over states. States and feds need to curtail spending and get this national debt under control. National debt is destroying our economic freedom which eats away at our other freedoms. Government CANNOT GIVE ANYTHING TO ANYONE WITHOUT TAKING IT AWAY FROM SOMEONE ELSE. I am sick and tired of my tax money going to endless wars and helping homeless and migrants.
This is kind of an ignorant comment. The article is about the State rejecting money to clean up the mess private industry left, not anything to do with wars or the homeless. As far as the debt, I agree with you. The government should be going after these polluting industries and make them pay,.