Wyoming, the Petrostate
Earlier
this week, I received a text from my dad with
some local sports news: the high school girls’
basketball team of my hometown, in Pinedale,
Wyoming, had beaten neighboring Jackson Hole by
a score of 61-5. “No this isn’t a typo,” he
wrote, punctuating the last sentence with a
smiling-face emoji. The text reminded me of my
own high school days and the vast distances our
teams would travel across Wyoming, no matter the
weather, to compete. Two- to five-hour trips
were not unusual; eight-hour drives were not
unheard of.
Later that day, I
learned on Twitter that Wyoming lawmakers had
submitted legislation to “ban the sale of new
electric vehicles by 2035.” And no, that isn’t a
typo either. Wyoming is desperate to keep its
fossil-fuel economy. The state produces 13 times
more energy than it consumes, according to the
US Energy Information Administration, and has
few taxes, relying instead on royalties and
other coal and gas money for the (few) public
amenities it provides.
There are
few bus or public transport options throughout
its high sagebrush plains and mountain towns, so
most people drive their own vehicles. The EV
ban, then, is particularly cruel or
short-sighted, depending on how generous you
want to be with state lawmakers. Because as the
world goes electric, and fewer manufacturers
produce gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles, the
people of Wyoming will fall farther behind,
paying a hidden tax, as they so often do. This
is particularly ridiculous because the geography
of Wyoming is more interesting than its geology.
Its mountains channel winds, “often fierce,” the
EIA says, somewhat poetically, that could
generate a lot of renewable energy. There’s no
reason it should not aspire to a renewable grid
that could support electric
vehicles.
What are we to do with
this kind of news? Not much, I suppose. The
people of Wyoming will suffer, gritting their
teeth and steeling themselves for the long,
expensive drives ahead, and history will snicker
at the naïve, greedy ideologues who wrote
foolish laws. The tide will turn, and eventually
Wyoming will have to catch up. It’s just a shame
that it will be beaten so badly, 61-5, say, in
the green revolution — a real but avoidable
trouncing. 
Brian
Calvert
Associate Editor,
Earth Island
Journal
Photo of road toward the
Grand Tetons, Wyoming, by Mark
Gunn |
