Yergin spoke recently to the Colorado School of Mines, one of the leading U.S. petroleum engineering and geology institutes.

This column is an opinion from Sara Hastings-Simon, a senior researcher at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines, and a research fellow at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.

Brad Handler, senior fellow for public policy at the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines, said he believes the near-term impact of the leasing moratorium will be much less than the industry says.

These chemicals can linger on geologic time scales, explains Chris Higgins, a civil and environmental engineer at the Colorado School of Mines.

“Historically the jobs in the oil and gas industry were higher paying on average. But of course that’s changing,” said Professor Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute for Public Policy at Colorado School of Mines.

Dale Gaubatz, who heads Mines’ admissions office, said colleges and universities have had test requirements for decades, but the number of underrepresented students hasn’t changed much.

“The sheer scale of these things is sort of amazing. It's almost impossible to imagine,” said Sara Hastings-Simon, an energy expert at the Payne Institute of Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines.

About 70 percent of classes will have an in-person component.

“I see the events as a dramatic and dark day in the history of our democracy,” political specialist Ken Osgood said. Osgood is also a history professor at Colorado School of Mines.