When I first sat down to write this column, I thought I would offer a few thoughts, inspired by the president, on how I have now decided that I actually won my 2008 congressional race, even though the other guy got a lot more “votes” than I did. As it turns out, he only won if you count all the ballots. Given that the 5th Congressional District of Colorado contains several counties and given that I clearly won the vote in Lake County (by a resounding 285-193 or so), I should have been declared the winner. Sure, there were several chunks of tens of thousands of votes that came in from GOP-stronghold El Paso County for my opponent, but someone I saw on Youtube said that there was someone driving a panel truck and pulling a red wagon full of “fake” votes for my opponent, and even though the sun was in his eyes, he saw a box that might have had ballots or sandwiches in it and we can’t risk fraud and so I want all the non-Lake County votes thrown out, please. Makes sense, right?

But rather than go on making cogent and timely observations about how I really won, today I want to talk with you about one of my favorite features on the Colorado Politics website, the Out West Roundup section, that I fear is too often overlooked by readers more interested in what’s going on in Denver. I’ve mentioned the Out West section a time or two before, and I recommend you check it out regularly.

In this week’s roundup, we learned about several issues surrounding fossil fuel production in our territory. Up in Montana, a federal judge ruled against the issuing of new oil and gas permits on Wyoming public lands, and the court went so far as to scold the Trump administration team that was fighting for more leases, calling their work “sloppy and rushed.” As a person who has spent a good bit of my adult life studying the U.S. government, I must say I’ve never seen an administration so willing to employ people who are blindingly loyal to Trump while also being, well, pretty terrible at their jobs. In this case, for example, the judge noted that the Trump folks had basically ignored any climate implications of the leases, which is against the requirements of filing for such leases. There were also simple math errors by the officials involved. When I was teaching at the Air Force Academy, cadets lost points for such mistakes in their homework. Apparently at the federal level that lesson has yet to be learned.

A second Roundup story noted that the Wyoming state government is going to use some of the federal coronavirus relief funding to plug up a number of idle and old oil wells. Wyoming has over 3,000 “orphan” oil wells in need of plugs (for a variety of industry as well as environmental reasons) and plugging them seems like a good idea at first. There will need to be teams of workers to do the job and putting people to work during the pandemic is a good thing. But some have raised concerns about using federal funds for this very specific purpose, as well as using federal money in any way to prop up the oil and gas industries, given their profits in recent years.

While I fully support the move to fully renewable energy sources as quickly as is practical, I also understand that we cannot make that change overnight. We will need oil and gas for years to come, even as we work toward a more sustainable energy policy. That said, it is not entirely clear to me what taxpayer dollars the giant oil companies should be getting, pandemic or no pandemic, but I digress…

This stuff matters, folks, because the challenges created by fossil fuel use (such as pollution, climate change gases, and more) do not respect state borders. The methane emissions loophole mentioned in the Roundup story on New Mexico notes that when oil companies vent and burn off methane at oil drilling sites not only do we waste a useful fuel, but we also increase our regional pollution. 

And for those of us here in Colorado, there are even more immediate and local concerns. A news story from last year noted that tens of thousands of acres of federal lands in Colorado were leased for oil and gas exploration, for which the oil companies will pay as little as – get this – an annual rate of $2 per acre in some cases, including one spot that is within a mile of a key habitat for the endangered Greater Sage Grouse. Now I can almost hear the eyerolls – what has a Greater Sage Grouse ever done for me – but I would argue that our state and our nation are better off when we are not killing off various species. 

That is a lot of information from a single Out West Roundup, and all of it is important to us here in Colorado and, frankly, ultimately all Americans. We spend way too much time on the most recent tweet from a reality-challenged president, while a great deal of work is being done on important issues around the region. So, check out Out West, oh, and remember, I won (that should do it. Where do I pick up my congressman pin?).