Big Sky

| ProfWork | Inside America | West |

Introduction

These notes accompany the discussion of the chapter entitled The Empty Quarter of our text, Nine Nations of North America. I have prepared these notes for classroom discussion. 

Themes

First, let us get this straight: The Empty Quarter is clearly not empty. There is a presence of great mineral wealth, mostly energy resources (low sulfur coal, oil trapped in rock, and uranium). What is presumed missing are people, or at least folks who are not Native Americans. Consider these factors, which are mostly land-based:

1. Many of the folks here are hard-scrabble poor who want work, a financial return from their land, and a way of keeping the kids home. They often advocate aggressive pro-growth policies, with little concern for social or environmental consequences.
2. They resent the East, which they blame for their colonial status. After all, much of the rights to the mineral wealth is owned in New York and much of the land is actually managed by the detested federal government, i.e. Washington, D.C.. Much of the West is owned by you and me as Federal lands. Garreau mentions this, but does not develop this significant fact. This territorial expression of political economy has a name, sectionalism, and thrives in the Mountain West.
3. Their region is arid, which limits the ability to exploit the mineral wealth of Big Sky, but Garreau mentions water only in passing.
4. Big Sky is an amazingly beautiful as well as mineral-endowed region, the last great wilderness, which many environmental organizations wish to be left alone --- without human inhabitants or intense human use. There lies the rub: The West is a conflicted region.
5. Sheer scale takes on great significance: the Mountain West is very large, indeed, but has few residents.
6. The mineral resources are fantastic --- but the earth's defenders are few relative to the size of the "prospectors." And mining is a very dirty business, polluting land, water, and air.

Energy Reserves

• Vast amounts of low sulfur coal and oil is trapped in tar sands. Mining the latter is expensive and demands huge water supplies. Coal is strip-mined, requiring expensive ecological restoration --- if the federal government enforces the Surface Mining Act of 1979.
• States often levy substantial severance taxes, or royalties, on extracted minerals, and corporations pit states against each other to curtail the practice. This helped coalesce the Western Governors Association to protect Western interests.
• Lower energy prices had taken development pressure off. Today's higher prices will bring those pressures back. Probably the critical issue is the exploitation of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), oil exploration in the northwest reaches of Alaska.
• Exxon's plans were, in 1980, extraordinary. Carter approved a powerful agency to promote mining in his Energy Mobilization Plan. Dramatic cuts in energy prices throughout the 80s and 90s killed the idea: The market halted invasive energy mining in the West.

National Parks & Forests

• Federal ownership of Western lands surprised most Easterners, but causes great regional resentment, mobilized in Sagebrush Rebellion, below.
• The Department of Interior is critical to Big Sky, so its Secretary always comes from region, such as Bruce Babbitt, former governor of Arizona
• Grazing, mineral, and timber rights are a constant struggle, especially the practice of clear cutting large swaths of forest.
• Emotional disputes also involve the reintroduction of wolves and the practice of fire ecology  in Yellowstone.

Politics

• Despite relatively low population, each state has 2 Senators, and they work together, mostly GOP. Thus, great influence on regional policy, a source of thriving Big Sky sectionalism.
• The Sagebrush Rebellion has subsided after Reagan and debacle of James Watt, Interior Secretary under President Ronald Reagan.
• The Wise Use movement is composed of anti-environmentalists allied with mining, timber, and grazing interests. Wise Use has clashed with environmentalists over development projects in the West. (Wise Use has recently come to New Jersey.)
• Mormon influence is especially strong in Utah, but has spread beyond its Salt Lake City base.
• Colorado illustrates the collision over growth. Although the state is famous for its scenery and its ski slopes, Colorado is really very conservative and pro-growth. Water quality, mining leachate, nuclear waste make for a complicated brew. Garreau divides Colorado: part Mountain West, part Breadbasket.

ProfWork, by Wayne Hayes, Ph.D.
for Inside America, AAMR30501
whayes@orion.ramapo.edu
Monday, March 20, 2000 05:30 PM