Utah is in contention as the Reddest state in the US after Wyoming, but Conservative Utah is now on board with planning for climate change. It turns out that one can and must talk to Conservatives about saving tax dollars while improving health and saving the planet.
All politics is local, and what gets local people riled up is usually money. Ideology is one thing, but when you start taking money out of people’s pockets, they tend to sit up and pay attention. That’s exactly what’s happening in Utah, a certified red state where the full conservative mantra as preached by Faux News is de rigeur. So why is Utah beginning to talk openly about the risks associated with an overheated planet? It’s the money, stupid, same as it always is.
Well, also smog on the mountains, threatening Utah's tourist industry as well as residents' health.
The Guardian says the shift in attitude began with the state’s youngest residents. High school students drafted a resolution that recognized the impacts of the climate crisis and encouraged emissions reductions, then persuaded two Republican lawmakers to sponsor it. Environmental advocates say it was the first measure of its kind to pass in a red state. After the resolution passed, the legislature responded by appropriating money for experts to provide policy recommendations.
Utah aims to reduce emissions over air quality concerns as other red states are also starting to tackle global heating
Florida and Nebraska are joining in. We'll come to them in future Diaries.
Jan 30, 2007 - Salt Lake City – Utah's world-class mountain peaks have been ... a cloudy shroud that has been described as soup, gunk, smog – and a few ...
The Current Plan
Red-state Utah embraces plan to tackle climate crisis in surprising shift—The Guardian
The Utah Roadmap
Positive solutions on climate and air quality
At the request of the Utah Legislature, the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute – with the assistance of a 37-person Technical Advisory Committee – prepared this Utah Roadmap to assist with legislative policy making to improve air quality and address causes and impacts of a changing climate. The Utah Roadmap identifies areas of opportunity to further reduce air emissions and ensure a healthy, productive and prosperous future for all Utahns.
The Gardner Institute and Technical Advisory Committee reviewed past Utah-specific work on air quality and changing climate completed by Envision Utah and the 2007 Blue Ribbon Advisory Council. This previous analysis included over 200 policy options. After a six-month expert assessment, we prioritized 59 of these options as those with the greatest potential to impact Utah’s air and changing climate. The Gardner Institute then selected seven strategies – or what we call mileposts – as the first areas of focus.
- Adopt emissions-reduction goals and measure results
- Lead by example
- Create a premier air quality/changing climate solutions laboratory
- Accelerate quality growth efforts
- Position Utah as the market-based EV state
- Provide economic transition assistance to rural communities
- Participate in national dialogue about market-based approaches to reduce carbon emissions
When we get to the specifics, we see that it is not enough. There is in Utah, as almost everywhere, a failure of imagination.
We recommend the following emissions-reduction goals be adopted by resolution or statute in 2020.
- Reduce criteria pollutant air emissions below 2017 levels by 50% by 2050.
- Reduce CO2 emissions statewide 25% below 2005 levels by 2025, 50% by 2030, and 80% by 2050.
But this is only the first try. They will learn better. 100% by 2040 or bust.
Elsewhere
Similar shifts in attitude are occurring in other traditionally Republican states. Former Florida governor — now Senator — Rick Scott famously prohibited anyone in his administration to use the hated words “climate change.” That changed after Florida’s Gulf Coast was hit with massive red tides that left tons of dead, rotting fish on its beaches. Tourist reacted in horror and took their money elsewhere. Now the state has taken an interest in preventing future algae blooms, although things may already be too late for the Sunshine State.
After a year of disastrous flooding last spring, Nebraska lawmakers pushed forward a bill to develop a climate change plan for the next legislative session. It is one thing to heap scorn on Democrats, liberals, socialists, and anyone else who doesn’t worship at the temple to Tucker Carlson, but quite another thing to ignore a tide of bankrupt farmers, some of whom have committed suicide as they watched generations of sweat and toil turn to ashes.
All politics is local. Fires, floods, bankrupt farmers, tropical diseases...everything can be denied when it is Someone Else's Problem, but not when smog chases the tourists away and kills the local ski industry. Or inundates beachfront properties, or threatens the nation's sweet corn supply.