Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon on Rural America, Climate Policy, and the Future of ESG

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon has dedicated his entire career to serving the state. Mark Gordon originally hails from Kaycee, Wyoming and he is a Middlebury College graduate. He is currently serving his second term as governor, securing reelection in 2022 with 79% of the vote, leading to the largest win in Wyoming history. He served as State Treasurer from 2012 to 2019. Chicago Policy Review’s Executive Editor for Policy Analysis Max Padilla conducted this interview on December 22, 2023. In Part One of this interview, Mark Gordon address issues specific to Wyoming and Rural America, while also focusing on climate policy and his take on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Please note, a staffer was also present during the interview and their contributions have been attributed to the Governor.

CPR: To kick us off, could you briefly overview what you believe to be the policy issues unique to rural states like Wyoming?

Governor Gordon: About half of our land and a little bit more than half of our minerals are controlled by the federal government. One of the chief policy issues is struggling against a federal government that can switch quickly from administration to administration. Several of our essential industries, especially coal, oil, and gas, are under serious threat. We have trona, a mineral that is necessary for manufacturing across industries. Wyoming can produce trona at about 1/3 of the carbon footprint that can be synthesized in either Europe or in China.

It has been difficult to explain that in Wyoming, we are pushing hard for technological advances that can help drive us to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We want to take charge of the development of our minerals in a responsible way. We had a methane rule long before the federal government ever thought about it. We have really led the way on wildlife. And we are really trying to control the way renewables are being deployed across our landscape without losing wildlife habitat or connectivity between states.

Another one of Wyoming’s biggest policy issues is mental health. Wyoming has the second highest suicide rate. We have really dug into trying to figure out the best ways to prevent suicide-related deaths. We are focusing on everyone from school aged kids to veterans, with a particular emphasis on veterans.

Wyoming is a very veteran-friendly state. A lot of veterans move here, and we want to ensure we can provide for those who have served. Veterans in particular face significant issues, one of the biggest being the long distances to Veterans Administration hospitals preventing service members from getting the services they need.

That speaks to a wider issue; Wyoming struggles with access to not only mental health, but healthcare in general. Our hospitals are really taxed as they attempt to provide services.

CPR: Let’s dig a little bit deeper into Wyoming healthcare. Rural states have 37% more residents without broadband access than their urban counterparts. After the COVID-19 pandemic we saw how integral broadband access is to safeguarding our health. Within the past 18 months, Wyoming went from the 43rd to the 35th among states on Broadband Now’s ranking of Internet coverage based on speed and availability. What steps did the state take and how can they be implemented in states like Idaho and Montana who consistently rank in the bottom 10?

Governor Gordon: Wyoming has a very small population and when you look at per capita statistics, we are always a little bit of an outlier. As we dealt with COVID, Wyoming really doubled down on building out access. A lot of the capital – nearly $50 million – came from the Cares Act. Before COVID, the state invested about $10 million of our own funds but could not spend it ahead of COVID. We just sent out $70 million in the last two weeks through section 604 of ARPA which is the Capital Projects Fund (CPF).

One of the challenges we had was navigating funding with D.C, but I was able to talk with a couple of secretaries and get a waiver to do our own analysis of places that did not have the kind of service they needed and then get the waivers to be able to deploy those funds.

CPR: I would like to shift a little bit towards climate policy. In a recent interview with 60 Minutes, you were called a leading voice in promoting climate friendly energy projects. Climate friendly energy policy is not a commonplace stance within the Republican Party. Do you see climate friendly policy being a dividing factor within the Republican Party in the next few years? If not, what do you see realistically being the mainstream attitude of the Republican Party? How can other Republicans be incentivized to lean into green energy?

Governor Gordon: First, Wyoming has seen it as an all-of-the-above energy policy. We are leading in nuclear development. We are leading in carbon capture and sequestration.

And on that, let me just say that there is another Republican state, North Dakota, that has been in the space as much as we have. We are looking at ways that we can reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by reducing emissions.

The biggest challenges we have is with D.C. There is a drum beat of “we’ve got to stop coal.” People think that if we put coal miners out of work, we will just make the world a little bit better. They do not understand what a challenge that is. In Wyoming, we educate our kids off coal. We built our schools off coal lease bonus sales. We mine it better than anyone else. It is low sulfur. We have something called the Integrated Test Center, which we stood up several years ago, which is the leading laboratory in carbon capture techniques. We have focused on developing techniques that reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

These two things at a national policy level are conflated. “Let us put that coal mining out of business. That is good for the atmosphere.” Wyoming is saying: it is carbon dioxide, not coal mining. Wyoming can do wonderful things with coal mining.

That is also true with oil and gas. Wyoming has the lowest methane footprint of any oil and gas producer. It is interesting because Michelle Lujan Grisham from New Mexico has much the same economy as Wyoming does. The fossil fuel industry drives the economies of both of our states.

One of the biggest challenges with renewables is their intermittency. Sometimes they drop off the grid; you must find something to fill in for base load. That is what coal and nuclear can do, though nuclear is a way off. Coal is incredibly valuable; if we invest in the right technologies, we can be incredibly climate friendly.

Wyoming has great wind, we have good solar, we have phenomenal nuclear opportunities. But we have the most coal. We are producing this in an ecologically friendly way. And we are just trying to tell that story.

I want Wyoming to be given the opportunity to develop energy in a unique way that positively affects climate. Renewables are not going to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, they will slow down emissions, but they are not going to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.

CPR: This August, the Wyoming Secretary of State called ESG related policies “a woke clown show.” Subsequently, the Wyoming legislature put in place several policies to push back against the ESG movement. As the rest of the country moves towards greener energy can Wyoming, given that it is the nation’s largest coal producer, really afford to ignore the “E” in ESG especially as institutions begin to divest from non-renewable energy sources?

Governor Gordon: ESG started showing up 15 years ago. When I was Treasurer, I was at the Milken Institute where everybody was touting reasons to get rid of coal, as if that is a simple thing to do. And then, everybody was talking about how great it was that they were not investing in coal anymore. My response to that at Milken was to say: “That is ridiculous.” Wyoming can do some great things with coal. If we are still going to be driving cars, we need materials that help us do that. So, we are looking at coal to make asphalt, and we are looking at carbon fibers derived from coal for aviation.

ESG is a cosmetic approach to the challenges that we really need to deal with. Most people do not look deeply into the “E” in ESGs. People have grandiose notions about what the “S” in ESG is. As far as governance is concerned people seem to only put more women on boards, but they ignore the more significant governance problems that ESG never talks about. If it is a bad board that does not do good work for a company, that is what governance is about. That is what takeovers, mergers, and acquisitions always exploit. My problem with ESG is it is cosmetic. ESG is misguided in imposing a rubric over public funds that has no business being there.

For example, people are making decisions about retirement and pension funds that affect the beneficiaries’ returns. Now people will say, oh, they perform well, or they do not perform well, but the fact of the matter is the fiduciary responsibility for a pension fund is to make sure that the pensioners get the best returns they can. Pensions are not supposed to try to change the world. In Wyoming, as Treasurer and now as Governor, I am part of the board that oversees the Wyoming Retirement System, so I need to make sure that we get the best returns we can. On the public side, there is no business for an ESG .

CPR: Teton has historically been economically disconnected from the greater Wyoming community, and individuals living there can take more significant economic risks. From a geographical standpoint, Teton County is particularly well suited for green energy developments like solar, wind, and nuclear energy. Do you see private actors rather than public ones pushing Wyoming into a greener space in the next decade?

Governor Gordon: Teton County has unique demographics, so their local politics are different than the rest of the state, and they will continue to look at some of those issues differently. It is the county with the highest median wage anywhere in the country.

People living in Teton County do not have much impact outside of Teton County. There is not a lot of investment, private investment, Angel investment, or venture investment outside of Teton County in Wyoming. Folks there do not really invest in Wyoming. So, if they are playing in markets or in companies or anything like that, most of that would be happening outside of Wyoming. Teton County gets its power from outside of the state. Most of their power comes from hydro; they have a green portfolio.

Poverty has never been good for the environment. We are working on ways that we can improve people’s standard of living throughout the rest of the state, give them proper and accessible affordable energy, provide better services for them, and give them the opportunity to succeed. I think there are many opportunities in Wyoming to help the environment. Even on my ranch we have done a great deal to increase biodiversity, increase production, and to sequester carbon. We have done that because of a commitment to that work as opposed to a commitment to fundraising.

This concludes Part One of this interview. Read Part Two here.