This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

I want to thank Matt Canham and the Tribune for last Sunday's lengthy piece, "Rep. Chris Stewart is the politician no one seems to know." Over the past few months, I've had the opportunity to meet with Stewart and his staff — first on May 4 when he visited our Bonneville Exchange Club, then last Tuesday when I and five other Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) volunteers met with his chief of staff, Brian Steed, and legislative assistant, Cam Madsen. On both occasions, I was very impressed with the cordiality and respect shown by the congressman and his staff. They listen and they care. Last Tuesday's visit was part of lobbying effort by 800 CCL volunteers from across the U.S. and several foreign countries. We spent the day in teams of six meeting with some 500 members of Congress (MOCs). Each meeting's purpose was to: 1) listen to and understand the MOC's position on climate change, and 2) assess their willingness to support revenue-neutral, carbon fee and dividend legislation, a market-driven solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We learned that Stewart has worked to promote geothermal energy in Utah's Second District, which runs along Nevada's eastern border from Farmington to St. George, then east to Hanksville, crossing over Richfield and Escalante and down to Lake Powell. Diverse interests are at play in the district, including farming, ranching, coal mining, oil and gas extraction, recreation and wilderness preservation. Not surprisingly, especially in more rural Utah, many of his constituents don't lend a welcoming ear to the warnings of climate scientists, who, in turn, do not give a supportive nod to carbon-fuel extraction like coal mining, a significant employer in the district. This creates a politically unfriendly reception for Stewart should he, for example, host a town hall meeting on climate change.

While CCL understands that representative government should reflect constituents' local concerns, we feel that elected officials have the obligation to provide constituents with information and warnings from federal agencies like NASA and NOAA regarding climate change.

A corollary to the need to inform constituents about climate change is the sudden and surprising surge in opioid addiction in Utah and across the country that seemed to catch us off guard. We praised Stewart's recent bi-partisan efforts in the House and Senate in helping pass 13 bills (some still requiring Senate approval) in May that address the problem. However, over two decades, opioid abuse has, very insidiously, become the leading cause of injury in the United States. According to the CDC, 78 people die daily from overdosing, and more die from opioid overdoses than in automobile crashes. Warnings of this creep of opioid addiction were downplayed by pharmaceutical companies and ignored by doctors, who were often incentivized to imprudently prescribe, with assurances that drugs like oxycodone were not habit forming. Suddenly, the problem has emerged front-and-center, and its effects are broad and deep, and its solutions are complex and costly.

The same can be said about the warnings regarding the greenhouse effect of human-caused carbon emissions, their contribution to global warming and the staggering impacts on climate change. How intense must extreme droughts become, followed by rain-drenched flooding or raging forest fires; and how dead and grey must the coral reefs turn, before the warnings are headed. CCL believes that the most efficient, effective and market-driven solution to reduce carbon emissions is to place a fee on carbon extraction, at the source, and return the revenue to households directly.

We were pleased with Stewart's hard work in promoting development of geothermal energy sites in his district. He is currently supporting an initiative of the Energy and Geothermal Institute (EGI) FORGE project for Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) at the University of Utah to create a dedicated field site, where scientists and engineers will develop, test and accelerate technological breakthroughs in EGS. CCL lauds these efforts and the time spent by Stewart and his staff in allowing us to get to know him.

Jim Wightman, retired after 12 years directing internal audits at Salt Lake County, wants a better climate for his 20 grandkids.