The essay on the Eastern wind farm clearly belongs to
the Real Westerners vs. Effete Easterners genre (HCN, 3/7/05:
Easterners tilt at windmills while Westerners joust with a real
foe). The fact that wind power has many positive features does not
mean that wind turbines should be sited wherever winds are
particularly favorable.
Easterners like myself who “care
about the West” are often puzzled by the small value that many
Westerners seem to place on their magnificent landscapes, judging
by their opposition to meaningful protections. I’m encouraged
to learn that local ranchers are uniting against environmentally
destructive energy development in the Powder River Basin. Yet the
energy policies that drive such development were framed by Vice
President Dick Cheney, formerly Rep. Cheney, R-Wyo., and enjoy the
support of the state’s present congressional delegation.
Their record on other environmental issues is equally dismal.
Unless you think that Wyoming elections are rigged, you have to
conclude that environmental protection just isn’t very
important to most residents.
Unfortunately, the same is
true elsewhere in the region: The poet asks for “men to match my
mountains,” and the West serves up the likes of Larry Craig and
Orrin Hatch. We owe what environmental protections there are for
Western federal lands not to them, but largely to people from
elsewhere, such as Ted Kennedy.
Scott
Lehmann
Storrs, Connecticut
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Westerns don’t protect their own.
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