The CU-Boulder Center of the American West has received a $60,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation to remind Westerners of both the positive and negative impacts that energy development and fossil fuel use have had on the region.
"We hope to take advantage of the national attention now focused on energy to lay the foundation for a better informed, more reflective public discussion in the future," said history Professor Patricia Nelson Limerick, chair of the center's board.
"We will undertake to remedy the state of collective amnesia about the history of energy booms in the Interior West, especially in terms of the costs and benefits they have brought to the region."
The grant will be used to produce op-ed pieces on various topics, public speeches, a Web site and an experts roundtable and public forum on energy issues.
In an opinion piece published in USA Today last month titled, "Country forgets an old Big Oil Lesson, and Enron results," Limerick and Brian Black, an environmental historian at Pennsylvania State University, Altoona, wrote about how Ida Tarbell's expose of Standard Oil in 1902-04 was relevant once again.
Another op-ed piece written by CU-Boulder undergraduate student Patt Kneeland critiqued three reasons that Americans use to justify their high consumption of non-renewable fossil fuels.
The center's energy grant is part of a $10 million energy initiative launched by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to address energy supply and conservation issues in California and the intermountain West. The goal is to bring new ideas and analysis into the energy debate.
The Hewlett Foundation also granted the Center of the American West a $165,000 operating grant for 2002.
The mission of the CU-Boulder Center of the American West is to explore the distinctive character and issues of the region and to help Westerners become well-informed, participating citizens in their communities.
For information call the Center of the American West at (303) 492-4879 or visit .