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| The Navajo Coal-Fired Generating Station |
Written by Tom Butine, Board President of Citizens for Dixie’s Future
Monday, June 22, is Congressional Climate Action Day across the nation. During this day, hundreds of volunteers will be meeting with elected officials on Capitol Hill to emphasize the importance of their action on climate change.
The scope of Citizens for Dixie’s Future is the conservation of air, land, and water and the implementation of smart growth policies which would support that conservation. “Air” goes all the way up. Our interest includes low-level air quality that can be visible and have immediate health impacts and high-level air (the atmosphere) which is not so visible but poses a much greater threat. If we continue to degrade the atmosphere, all of our efforts on the other elements of our scope will be meaningless.
As an engineer-scientist who has studied climate change and its related basis (the carbon cycle, the chemical/physical reactions of burning fossil fuels, the earth’s mechanisms for absorbing the resulting greenhouse gases), it’s obvious that the 98 percent of the world’s scientific community is correct: we must drastically reduce the burning of fossil fuels in the next very few years. So far, the required political action by our representatives has been absent.
While Great Britain and Europe started this mess in the 19th century, the U.S. really got it going in the 20th century, creating most of the problem within our lifetimes. China and India are picking up in the 21st century. If we lead the way, they have already indicated they will follow. The efforts on Capitol Hill argues a sensible, market-driven, small government approach: a carbon fee-dividend system.
Your phone call or e-mail (or both) on Congressional Climate Action Day will give our representatives the incentive to listen. It will only take a minute of your time.
Utah’s U.S. Senators’ contact information:
Mike Lee, 202-224-5444, http://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact
Orrin Hatch, 202-224-5251, www.hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact?p=Email-Orrin
St George/western Utah U.S. Representative:
Chris Stewart, 202-225-9730, https://stewart.house.gov/contact/email-me
If you vote elsewhere and don’t know your representatives, go to these websites:
For the U.S. Senate: http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/
For the U.S. House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
Contact our representatives on Monday, June 22, and tell them you want action on climate change.
For more information on the carbon fee-dividend system, visit http://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-and-dividend/.
