Utah lawmakers' slow-walk to renewable energy will cost us in the future
Small Lake City
By Wes Long
If the lightning bolts and the blood weeping from our walls have not already made it clear—the Utah legislative season is with us once more. While the issues addressed (invented?) during a session are legion, consider one subject in this world of limited resources and unbounded greed: namely, the issue of energy.
Rep. Kay Christofferson, R-Lehi, and Sen. Wayne Harper, R-Taylorsville, have sponsored HB74, a proposal for cost-sharing between telecommunication, oil and gas companies and the Department of Transportation in the event of projects that affect said utilities (such as highway expansion). Another bill is St. George Republican Rep. Colin Jack's HB191, which narrowly defines when an established electrical generation facility can be replaced by an alternative energy source.
Set aside the sense that these bills—and others yet to be seen—coddle and shield traditional utilities from any loss of comfort or profit, something that hardly gets extended to the rest of us when push comes to shove. Set aside the fact that Christofferson, Harper and Jack are all recipients of contributions from established industries in telecommunications, oil, gas and petroleum. What strikes me most is how limited our vision seems to be before the grander scheme of things; how riveted we Utahns remain to forms of energy that exploit nature and leave those at the bottom of the economic ladder to pay the biggest price.
In this age of climate crisis and diminishing returns, what are we even doing here?
Utility companies with an interest in remaining the only game in town will discourage anything that weans people off of their services, and lawmakers who are bought by them will duly oblige. But our politics require a larger vision, something that gets us back in touch with our souls and shared existence rather than our immediate gratification and isolated greed.
Moving away from carbon, oil and nuclear energy will never be embraced by industry—which despises any slowdown of "growth"—nor by some of the labor unions that take a dim view of short-term unemployment as the market undergoes long-term shifts. And so many Utahns involved in either group are simply trying to get by within the system we have.
Still, that doesn't mean we shrug our shoulders and continue to do what we have always done. Down that way lies a dead end.
"The victims of our system are now Third World countries [and our local poor] as well as nature who are exploited relentlessly in order to sustain the system," said German author Michael Ende. "Those investing money only for the best possible profit to increase capital and to expand will have to pay dearly because economic growth will ask its price. If reason cannot get mankind to change, then events will do it for them."
Small Lake City is home to local writers and their opinions.
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