New West Microcosm #2 - a fundamental divide

I am proposing with these "microcosm" posts that the Torrey-Teasdale Fremont River valley is a microcosm of the divide between the Old West and the New West. The area is a microcosm for the economic strain between the Old West and New.  It is also a microcosm of the whole country ideologically and politically. There are elements in tiny Wayne County of the pervasive and archaic practices of the extraction industry versus the modern information economy and of the non-economic political divide between Trump followers and progressives. The polarization in the county around the proposed gravel pit brings the divide into stark relief.

SITLA land in Wayne County

One would be forgiven for assuming the question of the gravel pit proposed by Wayne County commissioners for the front porch of residential Teasdale in Wayne County was one of economics. Again, its a microcosm example of the greater strife in the entire nation. Matthew Yglesias at Vox argued recently that Trump supporters are not primarily motivated by an "economic anxiety" as is commonly assumed. Instead Yglesias suggests they harbor a racial resentment and are understandably upset about their declining white privilege. Just as Trump people face that the social and cultural clout of nonwhite people has grown in the United States, locals in Wayne County are facing changes in their custom and culture of living off the land by extraction (mining, logging, irrigating, damming and draining streams, and grazing, grazing, grazing).  Locals' values are being challenged by the clout of move-ins who value the land for its natural, intact, spiritual and wild beauty. The fundamental divide over values and cultural identity is surprisingly deep and wide, like the canyons in this country. The argument over the gravel pit is a case in point and is not a simple matter of economics. Economically, locals are often their own worst enemy. An intractable sense of "way of life" and "custom and culture" gets in their way.

The Wayne County move-ins tend to have urban, cosmopolitan backgrounds and worldviews. They are often highly educated and progressive politically. They prize diversity, tolerance, pluralism, and most of all, here high on the relatively intact Colorado Plateau, environmental protection and conservation. Locals, on the other hand, tend to divide the world into us vs. them and are intolerant of anything perceived as a threat to their existing lifestyle. As the conflict over the proposed gravel pit in our front yard reveals, there is a bitter, acrimonious divide characterized by fundamental and irreconcilable difference in worldview between the average local and the average move-in. Much the same as for the average Republican and Democrat today. Wayne County is a microcosm of the political divide in the West and in the nation.

In upcoming posts I want to create a vision for a win-win approach to protecting the National Park gateway community of Torrey-Teasdale. What to do with the SITLA land? What are possibilities for annexation? Of improving and growing the tax base? Of utilizing the airport? The scenery? Our dark skies? Of getting two of three county commissioners to have a more progressive point of view?

And what to do about the fundamental divide?

"War" on coal: moving assets the wrong way

Todd Wilkinson at the Jackson Hole News & Guide has a good piece out this week on Wyoming and their self-induced energy industry related wounds. Wilkinson identifies the strange "fist of defiance" the state Republicans raise when faced with the 21st century. It is a head scratcher for me until I accept that the politicians are wholly owned by the energy industry and behave like it. There is no other explanation.

High Speed Rail in the West: Bring in people instead of climate change

It is too bad. Wyoming citizens outside the Jackson Hole area might be inclined to believe that the only real industry is the extractive industry. It is one they can see, one their state has history in, and yet one that in the end has always treated the state badly. It is too bad because these folks could use some true statesmen to guide them out of the vicious cycle of boom and bust and and landscape laid to waste as a result.

Timothy Egan, a man of the West and astute observer and writer about the New West has an editorial in today's New York Times in which he wonders what is happening to his home town of Seattle. The West coast large cities from San Francisco north are boom towns. One result is real estate costs and congestion are spiraling up and out of control. What does Wyoming have? Plenty of real estate and very little congestion. In addition much of the state is still beautiful. If the right wing statesmen in charge of the place could look in a different direction, they might attract some of this business. But this would mean they need to protect the land instead of trying to graze, mine, damn, drill and log it. Old West is the wrong side of history. Wyoming, drop your energy extraction habit, quite trying to ship fossil fuel west to the coast. Try turning things the other way.

Instead of coal ports, how about, say, a high speed rail moving the real assets, people, in and out of your state?

Mining for failure

Last century? 19th century?

Yesterday Brian Maffly had another excellent piece in the Salt Lake Tribune about the costly flailing about of the coal industry in Utah and the resulting conflicts of interest engaged by that industry's captured legislators. This morning Torrey House Press author (for which we are grateful!) Terry Tempest Williams has an op-ed in the New York Times on an inspired move she and husband Brooke have made on the same subject.

I expect I will be highlighting Maffly's work frequently on this site. He has the legislator's number and does a good job exposing their antics. That said I am a little surprised how gentle Maffly's words are. He keeps the gloves on. It took me a second read of his article to see he was accusing the actors involved in a $53 million loan of public money to the state's private coal industry of working with a blatant conflict of interest and in bad faith. For example, Jeffrey Holt, who stands to gain up to $3 million of the loan as a personal incentive fee also chaired the Utah Transportation Commission, which prioritizes projects for public funding. Holt and his crew are working to get public funding for their private gain for two projects, one a new rail line to haul the coal and two, a new port in Oakland to load the coal on ships to send to China.

Coal is Old West. Bloomberg News reported a year ago that Beijing will close the last of its four major coal-fired power plants this year.

Brooke and Terry Tempest Williams are New West. The future belongs to clean energy and those who recognize this simple economic fact will be those who benefit most. It is unfortunate for Americans that virtually the only people on the planet who don't believe it are U.S. Republicans. The Republican legislators, particularly in Utah are funded by the energy industry. The industry knows the facts, but a basic failure of capitalism stems from what economists call an "externality." An externality is where someone else other than the producer bears the cost of production, in this case the cost of pollution. In order for the public to put up with the costs, the industry lavishly funds willing legislators to promote their business and, say, make them $53 million dollar loans with taxpayer funds. Brooke and Terry have a brilliant strategy to use the energy of New West thinkers to keep the Old West energy in the ground. #keepitintheground And Brooke and Terry are using their own money.

I want to say much more about this in future posts. For now, consider quickly the graph below. But before you look, given how much time and energy politicians like Utah Governor Herbert or Rep. Rob Bishop spend promoting extractive industry, what percentage would you think it makes up of Utah's economy? Are you surprised that all of agriculture, natural resources, and mining (which includes oil and gas) only add up to 3.8 percent? Extraction is Old West.