The 922.2 megawatt Dave Johnson coal-fired power plant near Glenrock, Wyoming operates on low-sulfur coal strip-mined in the state and whose carbon emissions contribute to climate change. The plant is scheduled to close in 2027. Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who called out President Trump for lying about a stolen election, has in the past claimed the connection between burning coal and warming temperatures is based in "junk science." Photo courtesy Yidjp_1b/Creative Commons Share Alike 2.0 Generic/image cropped
Every Monday in “The Week That Is,” journalist and Mountain Journal founder Todd Wilkinson and MoJo’s national Washington DC correspondent Tom Sadler discuss topical events relating to the nation’s capital city and the public land West. This week the conversation turns to President Biden's climate change action plan, Congresswoman Liz Cheney's censure by the Wyoming Republican Party, and how telling the truth seems to be a situational proposition.
TODD WILKINSON: Hello Mr. Sadler. Well, we’ve received a few, and only a few, notes from readers who say they want us to avoid dealing with any political issues and just ply them with pretty, anodyne photos of wildlife and landscapes in Greater Yellowstone. I responded by saying that the very reason the animals and public landscapes they love about our region exist is because of environmental laws that are the product of politics. Your thoughts?
TOM SADLER: I saw that and you are right. The tone has been exceedingly unpleasant of late so folks want to tune out. But they do it at their peril. Understanding politics is essential to understanding how policy gets made. Making policy is messy, and to achieve durable results means compromise. Compromise is a lubricant to the policy-making progress. That’s politics.
WILKINSON: So let’s dive in. You take the lead.
SADLER: Over the weekend, the Wyoming Republican Party voted to censure Rep. Liz Cheney because she voted in the House to impeach now-former President Trump. She isn’t backing down, however, is she?
TODD WILKINSON: No, she stands defiant. But there’s been a series of events. When last we chatted, GOP Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida had just flown into Cheyenne and using the same rhetorical flourishes Trump often employed, called for Cheney’s ouster from House leadership and declared she should be primaried out in the next election by running a candidate loyal to Trump far to the right of even Cheney.
SADLER: This isn’t the only way the Cheney dustup has crossed state lines is it?
Montana's new GOP Congressman Matt Rosendale believes Liz Cheney should be stripped of her leadership in the House
WILKINSON: You are correct. Montana’s newly-elected US Congressman Matt Rosendale, a Trump Republican, not only supports Cheney’s censure in the US House but her removal from leadership. Bad blood is spilling all over the place. It’s kind of difficult to imagine Cheney and Rosendale working closely together on issues in the wake of what he’s said.
SADLER: I see that Cheney made her case during an appearance on one of the weekend talk shows, Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.
WILKINSON: Yes, and here’s where it gets real interesting, with direct implications for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and larger American West on environmental policy. It goes beyond Cheney being targeted for retribution because she was, quote, “disloyal to Trump” and calling him out for lying about mass election fraud. But critics say that what Rosendale, Gaetz and others did comes without any reflection on their own hypocrisy about being disloyal to the Constitution, election succession, the American people and telling the truth.
SADLER: Wearing your reporter’s hat, what do you mean?
WILKINSON: Well, ostensibly, at least as I was taught to conceptualize it, truth should beget truth and that truth should beget more truth, right? Isn’t that the goal?
SADLER: Certainly for a reporter. Shouldn’t we hold our elected officials to the same standard?
WILKINSON: During her interview with Chris Wallace, Ms. Cheney said, and I quote: “People have been lied to. The extent to which the president, President Trump, for months leading up to January 6th spread the notion that the election had been stolen or that the election was rigged was a lie and people need to understand that. We need to make sure that we as Republicans are the party of truth that we are being honest about what really did happen in 2020 so we actually have a chance to win in 2022 and win the White House back in 2024.”
SADLER: There you go. She makes my point. What’s inaccurate about that?
WILKINSON: Nothing, on the face of the facts as it relates to Trump. Cheney said, “Republicans are the party of truth…” which does not square with numerous deliberate attacks in recent years to undermine truth and the credibility of science. Later in the same interview, Congresswoman Cheney responded this way when the subjects of President Biden cancelling approval for the Keystone Pipeline and him putting a “pause” on issuing new permits for energy development on public lands came up.
She said, “The people that are being put out of work, when you look at the ban on additional permits for oil and gas leasing on public lands— you know, my state of Wyoming not only is it absolutely devastating to our energy industry, but the resources that come from those leases are what we used to fund our schools. It's what we used to fund services in our local communities.”
SADLER: How do you argue with that? It sounds compelling.
WILKINSON: Except, for one, you can’t claim that you’re putting people out of work or that you're against funding schools based on energy leases that haven’t been issued. What the Congresswoman said isn’t true and she knows it’s not true, the same as she knows that what she’s been saying about the science of climate change and the cause of the decline in the coal industry aren't true.
The Jonah Natural Gas Field in the Upper Green River Basin. Wyoming made a big gamble on fossil fuel energy development as a job creator and source of revenue for the state. But its "all of the above" approach promoting both gas development and coal production backfired when market forces, driven by a glut of cheap gas, caused coal prices to spiral. Some coal-fired power plants retrofitted to burn gas and coal companies in Wyoming declared bankruptcy. In reality, Wyoming isn't reeling from "a war on coal" by environmentalists but being torpedoed by supply-side economics. The chances that the state's fortunes will recover don't look good any time soon. Photo courtesy Ecoflight (ecoflight.org)
SADLER: Let’s dig in deeper on that. I’d like to understand the local angle there. What specifically are you alluding to?
WILKINSON: Biden's announcement to bring a "pause" to oil and gas leasing is just that, a pause; it is not a permanent ban. What critics of the announcement conveniently leave out is that huge swaths of the West already were leased by the BLM for oil, gas, and coal production before President Trump even arrived in 2017. Then it was his priority to accelerate the number of leases issued. Over the last four years, the Interior Department instructed the BLM to open up a lot more public lands, some of which, according to a federal court, were done illegally and need to be revisited. The assertion that Biden’s pause is hampering energy development isn’t true. The problem isn't opportunity to drill or lack of supply.
SADLER: Ok, it’s been a while since I’ve looked at this, help me understand.
WILKINSON: Three forces are at work, if we are going to talk facts, that were under way before Biden’ election. Some federal coal tracts up for lease during the Trump administration didn't even attract bidders and some oil and gas leases, including those in ANWR [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] issued at the last minute of the Trump administration, attracted little interest from industry. Meanwhile, market factors, including Covid, resulted in existing producing wells being idled by companies as demand decreased. The fortunes of coal, due mostly to being outcompeted by the abundance of cheap natural gas and rise of renewables, have tanked and put Wyoming’s fiscal situation into crisis. None of those things can be blamed on Obama nor preemptively on Biden. If there really is “a war on coal"—as was Cheney’s mantra— then its chief combatant is the natural gas industry and those who fostered policies for more fracking and coalbed methane drilling to proliferate in places like the Upper Green River Valley and Powder River Basin of Wyoming, the Bakken, the Permian Basin of Texas and many other spots.
SADLER: Earlier you mentioned the link between citizens expecting their elected officials to tell the truth about climate change. It’s our role as journalists to point out when that doesn’t happen, isn’t it?
WILKINSON: You must be reading my mind. In Nancy Sinatra’s song, These Boots Are Made For Walking, she croons, “You keep lyin’ when you oughta be truthin’.” Wyoming with both its state legislature and Congressional Delegation, as well as some elected officials in Montana and Idaho, could take a lesson from that.
SADLER: Is there a Liz Cheney connection here?
WILKINSON: Congresswoman Cheney is on record as saying there’s a lack of evidence demonstrating that carbon emissions, generated by the burning of coal and other fossil fuels, are warming the planet and causing the greenhouse effect. She has claimed “the science [of climate change and documented rise in temperatures] is just simply bogus, you know, we know that temperatures have been stable for the last 15 years.” And she claimed the findings of the National Academies of Sciences that climate change is already happening and that the consequences will be negative for people and the environment are based on “junk science.”
The NAS is the most respected scientific body in the world and cumulatively its members and associates have millennia of expert experience on a wide range of climatological, atmospheric, ecological and oceanographic fronts. In the same way that Anthony Fauci is a non-partisan authority on infectious diseases, so is the NAS an authority on the causes and effects of climate change.
Data gathered from many different stations shows that globally average temperatures are not "stable" or stagnant but rising. Entities like the National Academies of Sciences say hotter drier summers will lead not only to regular larger forest fires but water shortages for agriculture. In Utah, the water storage level in Lake Powell is near an all-time low. Graphic courtesy Climate Central
SADLER: Sounds like you think Congresswoman Cheney’s staking out ground as a crusader for the truth on Trump is disingenuous?
WILKINSON: I can’t judge her, or speak to her motivation on the issue of Trump’s impeachment and her take on the insurrection at the US Capitol. On those issues she’s taken risks and we have to take her at her word. One of her heroes, Ronald Reagan, said in response to the Soviets and the promises they made in a nuclear weapons treaty: “trust but verify.” On all issues, it is the role of journalism to verify that what elected officials are claiming is true is true. On a whole suite of issues, which we’ll get to at another time, Western politicians have made declarations about environmental issues that just don’t hold up to fact-based scrutiny.
SADLER: I look forward to that conversation. I’ll plant my curmudgeonly optimist flag right now and say lately I’ve found some common ground with folks I’ve been at odds with in policy discussions. Nothing like an assault on the seat of government to sharpen one’s focus.
WILKINSON: Tom, let’s go to a wider lens on climate change. Part of the Biden administration’s climate action plan is something called 30 x 30. What is it?
SADLER: Basically, it calls for bringing protection to 30 percent of the planet—the ocean, sources of fresh water and undeveloped lands by 2030. Doing so will help sequester carbon, protect wildlife and watersheds and have those areas as buffers against deepening effects. It’s a strategy that scientists say is essential for humans and ecosystems to be more resilient.
WILKINSON: You've been especially attentive to marine conservation issues. What are you hearing from folks about concerns with Biden's climate change strategy. First, what role do oceans play in addressing climate change and what have people told you about the 30 x 30 plan?
SADLER: Oceans are critical to any hope we have of dealing with climate change. They are the amniotic fluid of life on this planet so if they are impaired we’re in trouble. Oceans absorb and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, slowing the rate of global warming and keeping the planet from overheating. But the absorption is not infinite and that is troubling. One of the other concerns is that as oceans absorb more carbon they become more acidic and it's negatively affecting creatures like zooplankton that are building blocks of ocean life. Acidity levels are dissolving their protective shells. If zooplankton decline it can effect everything up the food chain.
WILKINSON: You wrote a fine overview that is available for MoJo readers who click here: In a nutshell what are some of your preliminary concerns about the Biden plan?
SADLER: The 30 x 30 initiative got some bad press early on when it was rolled out in the House Natural Resources Ocean Climate bill. 30 x 30 is addressed in Section 216 in Biden’s Executive Order. The order calls for a plan to conserve 30 percent of our oceans and lands and relies on broad stakeholder engagement to identify strategies to get there.
WILKINSON: How do you protect 30 percent of the ocean?
SADLER: The most talked about approach is using Marine Protected Areas. MPA’s are areas in the ocean where human activities are managed to protect important natural or cultural resources. The details like where, how large an area, and the “management” in those areas are important and, if not handled well, get pretty contentious. I hope Biden’s actions don’t turn into a battleground.
WILKINSON: What did you mean by “battleground?”
SADLER: Think Grand Staircase Escalante or Northeastern Canyons and Seamounts. They were vilified and attacked because of the process. People, rightly or wrongly, felt left out when Grand Staircase-Escalante was created and then when its boundary was shrunk back. Biden’s Executive Order is clear on the need for bringing all impacted communities to the table. That what will make conservation durable and up armored against political attacks. Don’t you agree?
WILKINSON: You mean the see-saw duel between Presidents issuing executive orders? You have one President and administration that promotes environmental policy, only to be answered by a new administration that cancels those initiatives out, only to be confronted by a new administration issuing new executive orders to reverse rollbacks in environmental policy. That would seem to be the epitome of government dysfunction, wouldn’t you agree?
SADLER: That’s right. If there is broad stakeholder engagement leading to support for the outcome, then the solution will be durable and less likely to be buffeted by the political fortunes of elected officials. In a hyper political environment such as we have now it is imperative to have the most inclusive process possible. It may take more time to get to agreement, but the upside is durability and political armor plating.
