This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated.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've heard that if you throw a frog in boiling water it'll jump out, but slowly raising the temperature will cook it. We Americans are ignoring the heat caused by climate change, as exemplified by Utah political leaders spending taxpayer money trying to build a coal export facility and paying for one of our nation's most egregious "merchants of doubt" to come sell his snake oil.
Ignoring the climate change crisis is the policy that the corporations profiting from this unrestrained pollution prefer, but that's not the only choice we have. Voting for candidates who acknowledge the scientific consensus on the need to stop burning fossil fuels can provide us with a future with less risk from torrential flooding, coral bleaching, algal blooms, fish die-offs and sea level rise.
It's too important for just Election Day, though. You can help America be great again by calling and writing your representatives, telling them that you want action on fossil fuel pollution. Having Congress place a price on fossil fuels based on their greenhouse gas emissions corrects this market failure, and returning the collected fees back to Americans can stimulate investment and employment working toward a cleaner energy future. Hop to it.
Kevin Leecaster
Salt Lake City