We have been thinking a lot lately about human-induced climate change, a global phenomenon, and what Utahns can do locally to ease it. The key, of course, is to reduce consumption of fossil fuels, particularly oil and coal.
As it happens, a series of air-quality alerts induced by triple-digit temperatures and wildfires probably has caused many of our readers to think along the same lines. There's nothing like burning eyes and wheezing lungs to focus the mind.
The arrival in local theaters of Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," has completed a sort of harmonic convergence on the issue.
State and local government and business leaders have been debating how best to raise billions of new dollars to build highways and mass transit. We think there's an opportunity for positive local action here.
Because mass transit is one way to reduce fossil-fuel emissions, we applaud local officials' efforts to accelerate construction of new TRAX light-rail lines in Salt Lake County. The price tag for the general obligation bonding that the County Council has voted in principle to place on the November ballot is a whopping $895 million that would be funded by a property-tax increase.
If, by chance, the Salt Lake Chamber's competing and more wide-ranging proposal wins legislative approval to give voters the option to increase the sales tax that goes to the Utah Transit Authority by .5 percent, reducing reliance on the property tax, that would be fine, too.
Ultimately, though, Utah must do much more to discourage solo driving and reward fuel economy. We would hope, therefore, that the Legislature would rely on fuel-tax increases, not general revenues, to finance new highways.
Because miles driven are growing much faster than population, it is evident that people are traveling farther to work, to shop, to school. We realize that many consumers have little choice; that is the way suburban America is engineered.
We've got to re-engineer it with walkable and transit-oriented communities. Envision Utah is showing the way, and Utahns are catching on.
But the journey's just begun, and time for action is quickly running out.
