CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Sitting in the headquarters of the Wyoming Liberty Group, Susan Gore, founder of the conservative think tank, said new national science standards for schools were a form of "coercion," adding, "I don't think government should have anything to do with education."

Gore, a daughter of the founder of the company that makes Gore-Tex waterproof fabric, was speaking here weeks after the Republican-controlled Legislature made Wyoming, where coal and oil are king, the first state to reject the standards, which include lessons on mankind's impact on global warming.

The pushback came despite a unanimous vote by a group of Wyoming science educators urging acceptance. Wyoming was the first state to say no, but likely not the last. A House committee in Oklahoma last week voted to reject the standards, also in part because of concerns about how climate change would be taught.

Amid a growing cascade of studies documenting melting ice caps and rising temperatures, schools are increasingly teaching students about climate change, and the new guidelines, known as the Next Generation Science Standards, have been adopted so far by 11 states and the District of Columbia. They assert that human activity has affected the climate.

Many here and elsewhere consider that liberal dogma rather than scientific consensus and want their children to hear it as theory rather than fact. What's more, some Wyoming lawmakers say, such teaching is a threat to the state's economic engine.

The standards "handle global warming as settled science," state Rep. Matt Teeters, a Republican from Lingle, told the Casper Star-Tribune. "There's all kind of social implications involved in that that I don't think would be good for Wyoming."

The controversy over climate science - and the question of whether other states will reject the standards - is in many ways a replay of fights over the teaching of evolution. Opponents say parents and local educators should determine what is taught to children.

"We question this whole idea of standards reform and the whole idea of nationalized standards," said Amy Edmonds, a policy analyst at the Wyoming Liberty Group. "We believe at the heart that it continues to take away parental choice."

The new standards were developed by 26 state governments and several groups of scientists and teachers.

They provide signposts for what students should learn in each grade between kindergarten and high school graduation, but leave decisions about textbooks and how to teach the curriculum to individual districts, schools and educators.