Anthony: Boulder sues Suncor over climate while leasing 12,000 acres to cattle

By Tom Anthony | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

As a Christian I get use of some ancient wisdom to toss around as I see fit. I defer to Matthew 7:5, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

The City and County of Boulder are suing Suncor and Exxon Mobil for knowingly driving climate change.

As to climate change, the heat this summer led to crispy pastures and dry reservoirs, but the winter of 2022-23 brought the most severe snow conditions in 70 years and killed off vast swaths of the Northwest Colorado wildlife herds.

I’m not sure of the long term intent with the Boulder/Suncor lawsuit but all the folks out in reality-land driving internal combustion engine vehicles (ICE-V’s) can guess one outcome, for which we don’t even have to await a court decision: higher gas prices.

As Dean of CU law school, Phil Weiser worked with the natural resources faculty to enhance and rename the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment.

The Center he renamed brought him back in 2021 as attorney general to talk about fighting federal energy rules, a podium from which, on the taxpayer dime, he has proudly sued “drill baby drill” Trump 86 times and counting and filed an amicus brief on behalf of Boulder, thus dragging everyone in Colorado onto Boulder’s side of the scales of justice.

Are Boulder and our AG (and aspiring Governor) causing more strain at the gas pump than Iran?

Boulder, surrounded by about 70,000 acres of Open Space purchased beginning in 1898 and augmented with a dedicated sales tax in 1967, which now won’t expire until 2039, has also forfeited millions in tax dollars while approving another 40,000 acres of conservation easements under tax relief agreements.

These open space policies have driven a land shortage and commensurate real estate value surge leaving Boulder homes at nearly double the cost of nearby Longmont, which is also in Boulder County, despite the burden of carrying (110,000 acres at 640 acres per square mile) 171 square miles paying next to zero mills. Prophetically, perhaps, home values in Boulder County have flatlined since the pandemic.

Certainly one must anticipate some fallout from this legal case if Boulder is successful.

For one thing Suncor is Colorado’s only oil refinery and a loss here would necessitate a price rise to compensate, and, I’m prognosticating now, start a whole series of new lawsuits building on the “win” that would ultimately bankrupt Suncor, not to mention Exxon Mobil.

That would leave Coloradans dependent on solar panels, 89% of which are produced in China or other Asian countries, and Phil Anschutz’s wind farm in Wyoming to charge their new electric car, assuming they can afford to buy one. What a win for Colorado’s richest billionaire and, on his coattails, the world’s richest man, the Tesla guy.

With apologies to Trey Parker, would the blue sky state seamlessly switch from smog to smug? How about from diesel to plowhorse? This might become a business boom for the Amish, but they’d have to submit to getting their kids vaccinated.

As we all know, Boulder is special in so many ways that it’s indescribable. Now it’s getting the Sundance Film Festival which is either the icing on the cake or the aperitif on the hors d’oeuvres. How fitting that the US acquired it in the Louisiana Purchase from the French, who gave us Cache La Poudre and St. Vrain, not to mention Lafayette and Louisville.

Along with being the global capital of Climate Change and seat of Robert Redford’s alma mater, CU, Boulder is the pride of fitness and adventure with its runners, bikers, and rock climbers. With such a resume, history, and future I read with amazement that Boulder Valley Schools is shuttering or transitioning 16 of 56 schools due to enrollment declines expected to surpass 5,000 since 2017.

“Reasons for the drop, officials said, include lower birth rates, an aging population, the high cost of living, low housing inventory and more affordable housing opportunities in surrounding districts,” the Denver Post reported.

In other words, young people having kids don’t move there, despite it being a center of gynecological expertise from fertility to abortion, and even houses the misnamed Colorado Fertility Project, a branch of CU dedicated to proving why having kids disrupts a woman’s life.

Meanwhile, the neighboring St. Vrain School District passed a $740 million capital improvements bond in 2024 to build new schools in Firestone, Mead, Erie, and Frederick, due to climbing suburban enrollment, while closing Sanborn Elementary in Longmont, which is also undergoing a student exodus.

The bottom line here is that young people are fleeing the established urban areas to suburbia and yes, to Weld County, where there is no county sales tax for Open Space, or anything. Again, Phil Weiser has also jumped on this “horse” by declaring he will be helping fund single family home construction using modular housing, the Weld County mode of choice.

What, no condos?

This population movement drains and idles resources in the population centers (Denver is teetering on a commercial real estate bust) while driving new infrastructure demand and distributing new urban sprawl and commensurate higher energy use across historic farmlands and hundreds of square miles in the Front Range I-25 corridor.

Could policies in highly Democratic Boulder, Denver, and Longmont be causal?

If not, what is government for….entertainment?

Interestingly, a group of ranchers have filed an amicus brief with Boulder, alleging that climate change is harming their multi-generational way of life.

That is despite the fact that cows emit, on average, 209 lbs of methane gas per year, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than CO2 in its first 20 years after release.

Cattle industry growth is also responsible for 41% of global deforestation, and in South America and Africa is rapidly replacing rainforests with grass, with Brazil, HQ of our global meatpacker JBS, driving 26% of global deforestation and exchanging multi-story oxygen-emitters housing the world’s largest biodiversity for cow burps.

And yet, Suncor is harming their “multi-generational way of life.”

In fact although the calculation above shows cows emitting fewer greenhouse gases than cars, their calculation spans 100 years in which methane is 28x more potent than CO2, but in the shorter term of 20 years methane is 80x more potent and, when first produced, 100x!

Keep in mind the equatorial jungles are the lungs of the planet, and grasslands are the hotbed of methane emitting ruminants, so cattle ranching, particularly in rainy zones, smothers our short term carbon sequestration while driving up the 100x more potent methane emissions.

Yet, the cowboys have jumped on Boulder’s “bad Suncor” horse. I lived near Suncor for 18 years and can attest to it being a bad neighbor that gets away with crime via Supplemental Environmental Projects, but that’s a different day’s tale.

While the immediate move for Boulder might be to plan for college student camping at the newly vacant schools during the Sundance Film Festival (so they don’t have to idle their ICE-V’s back and forth on US 36 each day), and provide a welcoming environment for young people from other jurisdictions to dip their toes into the Boulder scene without forking over $1,000/night, are we to believe that the current population trajectory (aging and dwindling) is being centrally planned?

CU students have told me “the worst thing you can do for Climate Change is have a child,” and though I have no insider knowledge of the Boulder intelligentsia I’m not going to argue nothing is happening with climate, which changes all the time thankfully, or things would look really grim.

Regardless, the “childrened” of the northern counties have migrated to the I-25 corridor, and now must drive a lot more than an urbanite to cover all the “soccer mom” bases between morning coffee and Dan Rather (or is it Walter Cronkite?) This will result in the release of a lot more than normal greenhouse gas.

So here I pose two questions: Did Boulder plan this selfish future that makes life harder for those having kids?

Boulder County leases better than 12,000 acres of its open space for cattle while the county sues over greenhouse gases. Is Boulder going to maintain its practice of cattle grazing on its “Open Space”?

Tom Anthony has served as non-profit director for a half dozen public benefit LLCs and corporations, partnered to do the pre-development work on Colorado’s largest pre-1900 warehouse condo conversion project, the Watertower Lofts, served as Executive Committee Chair of PRT Associates, LLC, a Colorado advanced transit company, and as Agent for more than 40 other Colorado businesses. He began his business career as an independent distributor for the Rocky Mountain News at age 11.

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