[consentfactory]

Another Idahoan here.

I don't completely buy into the notion that conservatives here are conservationists. I think there definitely are some that are, but I think larger contributing factors are that we have an abundance of renewable energy (hydro, wind, and sun), low population, and a ton of federally-owned land.

We have so much hydro power that some of our dams aren't even owned by Idaho Power. For example, Lucky Peak Dam, which provides flood control for the Boise River and Boise, has a power plant there that is actually owned by Seattle City Light that provides 4% of Seattle's power (1).

Also, Idaho doesn't have a lot of fossil fuels to harvest (2), so this likely plays into lack of desire for coal. Mining in the north and agriculture in the south are our primary economic drivers.

In terms of the politics, our legislature this year just barely formed a committee to discuss climate change, but our governor did say it exists and is a problem, so who knows? I suppose I tend to think that our population's demand for electricity is no where near greater than our supply, which is why demand for coal isn't really there.

However, if someone from the outside wanted to install a coal power plant, I think conservatives here would easily support it. That may be my cynicism coming through, but I could easily see Trump advocating for it and then the freedom trucks with their freedom flags and freedom coal rolling exhausts would rally to support this.

Yeah, I'm a tad cynical.

1. http://www.seattle.gov/light/history/brief.asp 2. https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=ID

[kevin42]

The thing about coal here in Idaho is that there are very few reasons for conservatives to like it. There are no coal jobs here.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying conservatives here are actually conservationists, I just mean that many of them tend to be more interested in the outdoors. I'm just basing that on people I know and encounter, so the sample size isn't huge.

Also, the weird thing about Idaho is that there are at least two, maybe three Idaho's. There is Eastern Idaho, who are largely extremely conservative farmers, then there is the Boise area, which relative to Eastern Idaho is less conservative. Then there is Northern Idaho, which I don't really know how to describe, but they don't fit either category.

[consentfactory]

I completely agree with you here on everything, I just think that conservatives here could easily get riled into supporting coal merely for political reasons. You're right, there's not a huge quantity of reasons to like it, but in our binary political culture, I could see them getting behind it.

I mean, we have Texas oil barons that are blocking access to public land in the McCall area that has really great hunting, but the Idaho legislators here opted not to pass legislation to help regular Idahoans have access. Why? Private property and individual rights were the big reasons I read, which clearly affects most Idahoans, but for some reason they didn't support them.