Colorado fires expose danger of ‘energy dominance’ hypocrisy
by Quentin Young, Colorado Newsline
August 14, 2025
Jeff Hurd, the U.S. representative from western Colorado, met this week with first responders and residents from a region where multiple wildfires are raging. The Lee Fire had become the fifth-largest wildfire in state history and was threatening the town of Rifle, where officials had to evacuate a state prison in the fire’s potential path.
In a social media post about the visits, Hurd thanked local authorities and community members for their response to the fires tearing across his district, and he vowed to “be here for the long haul to help recover.”
But nowhere did he offer the most appropriate gesture: an apology.
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Hurd, along with the other three Republican members of Colorado’s U.S. House delegation, has promoted drill-baby-drill policies as part of a Trumpist “energy dominance” agenda, even though those policies crank up the greenhouse gas emissions that guarantee more megafires in Colorado. The only posture truly available to Hurd when he meets constituents is contrition. The only plausible message is, “I was wrong.”
Rising global temperatures are increasing the risk and frequency of extreme weather across the globe. The Southwest is being transformed by aridification amid the worst drought in 1,200 years. There is no scientific doubt that the primary cause of climate change is the combustion of fossil fuels.
In Colorado, this means bigger, fiercer wildfires and a fire season that no longer respects warm-month limits. The most destructive wildfire in state history, the Marshall Fire in 2021 in Boulder County, occurred five days after Christmas. The state’s 20 biggest fires have all occurred since the turn of the century. The three biggest came in 2020, when one of them, East Troublesome, grew so ferocious it leapt over the Continental Divide. A 2021 study found that hotter, drier conditions in the American West are causing fires, such as East Troublesome, to reach high elevations that were previously too wet to burn.
“And they are burning at rates unprecedented in recent fire history,” the authors wrote. “While historical fire suppression and other forest management practices play a role in the West’s worsening fire problem, the high-elevation forests we studied have had little human intervention. The results provide a clear indication that climate change is enabling these normally wet forests to burn.”
Colorado is especially exposed. A huge part of the state is the site of one of the largest areas of the highest temperature spikes in the lower 48 states. It covers Hurd’s hometown of Grand Junction and much of his district. Either Hurd is oblivious to the science or he’s cynically chosen to side with oil and gas industry interests.
During the freshman Hurd’s campaign last year, he sometimes seemed to align with an “all of the above” energy policy, which at least purports to include renewables, but he also signaled a strong preference for fossil fuel extraction over wind, solar and other renewable energy sources. He even champions coal, the most damaging of fossil fuels, a position he’s reinforced as recently as April.
Hurd found himself in an awkward spot once he was in the House as MAGA extremism sought to demolish the all-of-the-above plank and demonize renewables. He and U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans of Fort Lupton were among 21 Republicans who urged colleagues not to eliminate energy tax credits, which support wind and solar jobs and development in Colorado. (The other two House members from Colorado, Lauren Boebert and Jeff Crank, left their names off the letter.) But they both voted to pass the recent Trump megabill, which eliminated the credits.
Hurd insists he believes climate change is real. But this just makes his approach all the more hypocritical. For example, he repeats the pro-carbon talking point that since fossil fuel in other countries is dirtier than America’s the U.S. should maximize production.
“If you genuinely care about reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, then you ought to support getting as much energy out of Colorado as possible. That includes not only the clean coal that we have, but also natural gas,” he told CPR in September.
But that’s like saying that since people are going to abuse fentanyl even though it’s deadly, America should manufacture a superior product to preempt China’s more dangerous supply. An immoral practice should be avoided because it’s immoral, not pursued with improvements.
If he has any doubt that prioritizing carbon-based energy is immoral, Hurd should take a closer look at the environmental catastrophe unfolding in his own district. He often cites the jobs at risk in the transition to renewable energy, but this short-sighted perspective ignores substantial state greening efforts to responsibly transition local economies, and it misses the larger risk that whole regions of a cooked Earth will be uninhabitable.
The megafires in Hurd’s district are exposing “energy dominance” as disastrously self-defeating.
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Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com.
