Namely, that it can be just as backward as any of those former Confederate states back South and East, by golly.

Wyoming is the first state to block a new set of national science standards, but a week after Gov. Matt Mead signed off on the change, education advocates are still digesting what the action means for the state.

Some say the provision, which came through a last-minute budget footnote, blocks the state from considering any part of the Next Generation Science Standards, a set of K-12 standards developed by national science education groups and representatives from 26 states. Others, including the provision’s author, say it prevents the wholesale adoption of the standards as they are written.

[snip]

One of lawmakers’ big concerns with the Next Generation Science Standards is an expectation that students will understand humans have significantly altered the Earth’s biosphere. In other words, the standards say global warming is real.

That’s a problem for some Wyoming lawmakers.

“[The standards] handle global warming as settled science,” said Rep. Matt Teeters, a Republican from Lingle who was one of the footnote’s authors. “There’s all kind of social implications involved in that that I don’t think would be good for Wyoming.”

Teeters said teaching global warming as fact would wreck Wyoming’s economy, as the state is the nation’s largest energy exporter, and cause other unwanted political ramifications.

Micheli, the state board of education chairman, agreed.

First off, I love that this was done in a budget footnote, presumably because its authors hoped it would be overlooked. Secondly, Rep. Teeters there seems to have selective standards for what’s settled science and what’s not. One wonders whether the impact of sending drill bits sideways through the earth hundreds of feet below the surface, as fracking does, is “settled” science (“And Exxon looked upon its result and said it was good”) whereas the warming of the earth and the rise of sea levels will remain “unsettled” until there are beach homes on either coast being submerged by the oceans.

Representative Teeters does have a firm grasp on the real Golden Rule, though. Speaking of the state board of education, he denied that he and the Legislature had overreached by telling it which standards it could and could not accept and teach: “We set their budget,” Teeters said. “We control what they do.”

Wyoming is well and truly Dick Cheney’s home and deservedly so.