Resistance

Abstract

THERE WAS A TIME when Wyoming was infinite and wild. That was before the exponential growth curves began to shoot upward in the inevitable flight that took much of Wyoming with it. Wyoming’s elevation and aridity were not sufficient sentinels to ward off energy development and its architecture of despair. Man-camps and half-abandoned trailer parks. Cities of gas wells lighting up the night sky. Ancient migration paths interrupted. Dust and ozone and water that ignites. Halliburton trucks endlessly pacing up and down the once-empty roads. Wyoming has become a restive place. Its legacy of deep time now in drawdown to provide the raw material of our civilization’s experiment with domestication: endless economic growth. There seems no limit, as yet, to the demand for coal, oil, and gas.