Dr. Caroline Johnston, 'Rocky Mountain Extractivism in Washington'
About this episode
Dr. Caroline Johnston discusses the intersection of fossil fuel extraction and the rise of the modern American Right in the Rocky Mountain West during the 1970s and 1980s.
This episode explores ‘carbon cowboys,’ the creation of A Blueprint for Conservative Government (1980), and an emerging historical concept: ‘extractive-statism.’ Dr Caroline Johnston is a political, environmental, and economic historian of the modern United States, and, since September 2025, the Paul Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in American History at Cambridge University. At the seminar, she presented chapter five of her prospective manuscript, which examines the intersection of fossil fuel extraction in the Rocky Mountain West during the 1970s and 1980s and the rise of the modern American Right. She explains how fossil fuel executives in this milieu developed a paradoxical ideology: demanding extensive federal subsidies and intervention while simultaneously invoking the imagery of the rugged individualist ‘frontier cowboy’ to denounce government regulation. “And their rhetoric is explicitly anti-statist—they never acknowledge that they have historically and contemporarily benefited from enormous subsidies and structural aid from the government.” Central to her research is the influence of figures such as Joseph Coors, descendant of the founder of the Coors Brewing Company, who…
People in this episode
Guest: Dr. Caroline Johnston
Topics covered
- extractivism
- fossil fuel extraction
- American Right
- political history
- environmental history
- economic history
Keywords
- carbon cowboys
- extractive-statism
- federal subsidies
- rugged individualism
- Joseph Coors
- conservative ideology
- Heritage Foundation
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: The Heritage Foundation, Coors Brewing Company
Books & works: A Blueprint for Conservative Government
Places: Rocky Mountain West
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