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this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
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This example is for a 640 acre property leased at $12,160, which the oil company claims was an artificially inflated price because a conservation group was bidding.
That seems like a ludicrously small dollar figure. My guess that that the state is leasing the land cheaply, then making up for that with severance taxes on the extracted fossil fuels and minerals. Conservation groups would not generate those severance taxes.
That's exactly how it works and it's why the State of Wyoming cannot afford to let leases go to organizations that won't use them.
To be clear I'm not giving them a pass. They are choosing to damage the environment and accelerate climate change in order to be a tax haven for the ultra-wealthy. They could absolutely find another more sustainable way to find the government if they wanted, and deserve to be criticized for the choices they've made.
You mean like building the largest Wind Farm in the United States and possibly the world?
How about we retire coal plants and replace them with next-gen Small Modular Nuclear Reactors?
We could also build really large solar farms on all this empty land we have.
Wyoming re-wrote it's tax code over a decade ago so that all power generation in the State is taxed. It's been busy since then expanding transmission lines and smacking down anyone who tries to stop the build out of green power. So yeah, it has been working on environmentally sustainable ways to fund the Government.
Our University is also a leader in Carbon Sequestration Technology and we're building the worlds largest Carbon Sequestration project.
There's a lot more going on around energy production in Wyoming than most people know about.
While that's all true, it's also true that Wyoming today has the highest CO2 per capita production in the US at 96.4 tons.
The re-writing of the tax code you mentioned created the "Cowboy Cocktail", making Wyoming a tax haven for billionaires and enabling money laundering.
They are taking some small, slow steps towards mitigating the damage they have been doing for decades and are continuing for the foreseeable future.
Sounds like that's largely because they are the top coal producing state (40% of US coal). In 2023, 71% of power generation was from coal. 23% was from renewables, with about 90% of that coming from wind. But yeah, coal's just going to produce a lot more CO2, even compared to other fossil fuels.
Um... Yes. Just to be clear, I am advocating that Wyoming produce less coal.
And for the US (the whole world really) to consume less.