I wrote this in response to Ihlin's post below, but felt I should make it a separate diary entry.
From an historical perspective, the West used to be one the most radical regions in the country, largely because the enemy before WWII was always "Wall Street." Ironically, since the federal government became so involved in the affairs of Western states from the New Deal forward as it helped develop the region, Washington DC has replaced Wall Street as the enemy. However, its not like financiers and Wall Street execs have become heroes in places like Montana, its just that DC bureaucrats are now seen as a larger problem. In many of the intermountain west states, the Federal gov't owns over 50% of the land.
Thus, here is one of my sticking points with environmentalists, or at least mainstream envrionmentalists like the Sierra Club. I consider myself a staunch environmentalist and think the development of alternative energies and increased fuel efficiences should be absolutely central to American society. But I also think that the mainstream environmentalists are too often concerned with preserving "wilderness" (a human construct) and not with human's real impact on the natural environment. Not only does the fetishization of middle class recreation spaces (unsurprisingly) piss off people who actually live near national forests (and thus become "antigovernment Republicans), but it misses the larger point of what environmentalism should be about. Ie about reducing wasteful consumption and moving away from dependence on fossil fuels and not about preserving "pristine" wildnerness playgrounds for well-to-do city dwellers and suburbanites. Not to say that we should clear cut Yellowstone National Park, but rather that "locking up" forests should not be the number one goal of environmentalists. Environmentalists should be more willing to compromise in this realm, while fighting hard where most of the damage is done: ie SUVS, air conditioning, etc.