Dear editor:

With the enjoyable warmth of this fall season also arrived the unprecedented Elk Fire near Dayton. Wyoming is teaching us something. Over here on the other side of the Big Horn Basin, we haven’t had a fire blow up since mid-July, but you can ask your local elk hunting guides what they are learning in this kind of extended season of warmth. I want to talk about us as a people who gives thanks in our everyday interactions for the blessings of brilliant fall leaves and the pleasures of unseasonably warm temperatures while we do not make space to discuss what kinds of uncertainty the warmth raises for our ecological and economical futures. 

I picture local leadership convening citizens and experts in fact-finding pilgrimages after extreme weather events. I’d go to walk the scenes together and reality-test our ideas about what is happening in these unprecedented events; hearing the voices of the people impacted and learning from natural resource experts what the data and trends tell us. We could explore the lessons Wyoming is teaching us in a serious way. 

Those fires were made worse by the blanket of warming gasses that we knit into thicker heat-trapping layers with fossil fuel emissions. I love the black coal of Wyoming and all the people who’ve made it their life’s work to extract and deliver coal, oil, and natural gas. Those could be the honored guests at such roundtables — we need their ingenuity and problem solving. We need them to know that we want their leadership for our new energy futures. Strengthened by local roundtables, our energy workforce can lead the transition. 

I’m voting for Kamala Harris because I see local roundtables and problem solving as our way forward, rather than Trump’s promise to drill baby, drill. There’s nothing fiscally conservative about a path that increases greenhouse emissions. Look at the expenses we rack up in Wyoming between wildfires and floods/mudslides, let alone the expenses that come to us as taxes after the extreme hurricane events.

At the 2018 March for Science in Cody, we had displays to show our fellow Wyomingites how Trump was hiding the scientific truth about our warming planet and its intensifying hydrological cycles. He abused his power and removed information from government websites. The removal of references to climate change on government websites happened before Sharpiegate, the Hurricane Dorian scandal in 2019. Trump made an end-run with a sharpie, defacing the scientific data, and requesting NOAA to make false statements so that Trump could claim he was right. 

I haven’t forgotten that he chose ignorance of the science for himself and for the American people. He will pull out sharpies again, dousing the political will of an informed public that would otherwise organize itself to reduce emissions. I’ll vote against Trump because he does not think we can or want to face the truth that Wyoming is teaching us. 

Mary Keller

Cody