In states like Wyoming, and Montana, it could be a 45-min drive (each way) to go to the grocery store, or a dentist, doctor etc. Buses drive long distances to go to school! It's not feasible to demand everyone convert to electric vehicles.

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By Jonathan M. Gitlin

Legislators of the nation’s least-populous state are taking a brave stand against modernity and climate action. They’re sponsoring SJ0004, “Phasing out new electric vehicle sales by 2035,” an uncomplicated bill that expresses the state’s goal to phase out sales of new EVs by 2035 and asks Wyoming’s industries and citizens to do their civic duty in resisting the EV. Copies of the resolution would be sent to the White House, leaders in Congress, and the governor of California.

The motivation, according to the bill’s preamble, is that the oil and gas industry is important to the state, a state with fewer than 600,000 residents. Wyoming is proud of its oil and gas industry, and that gas—here presumably meaning “gasoline” and not the natural gas referred to in the bill’s early sentences—powers vehicles that drive on the state’s vast stretches of highway.

The bill’s authors think Wyoming’s interstate network is too desolate for electric vehicles, particularly since there is no existing EV charging infrastructure, they claim.

The authors also decry the fact that EVs require certain critical minerals—not currently supplied by the state of Wyoming—and that these could end up polluting landfills in Wyoming, in obvious ignorance of the enormous recycling potential for EV batteries.