Colorado: R-alaska

WASHINGTON — In one of her earliest appearances before the Senate Natural Resources Committee, Gale Norton, President George W. Bush's first interior secretary, proclaimed in 2001 the need to "explore the entire smorgasbord of different options" when it came to domestic energy production.

But what was actually on the buffet was telling: Drilling off the coast of Florida, coal extraction in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah and exploring for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Now fast forward eight years, to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's first appearance before the same Senate committee last week.

He laid out maps that showed wind-energy potential across the West; talked about tapping geothermal energy underlying states including Idaho and Colorado; and evoked the vision of a high-tech "super- electron highway" that will connect "renewable-energy zones" on public lands to homes in California or New Jersey.