We now know that increases in carbon dioxide, methane and water vapor concentrations in the atmosphere will lead to an increase in the average Earth surface temperature. You don't believe me? Get into your car on a sunny day and tell me with a straight face that you don't feel warmer.
As a heat transfer expert, I can assure you the thermo-physics of global warming are exactly the same as what heats the air inside your car parked in the sun. Expect the naysayers to declare the hot air is a hoax. But our experience tells us this warming is real and that we need to change our relationships with oil and coal or we'll face a host of enormous problems accompanying global warming.
Utah is in an interesting energy situation. We have coal, oil and oil shale. We are also blessed with sunshine, snow-capped mountains (for now), geothermal resources and uranium. Unfortunately, according to the best global-warming predictions, Utah may feel the most dramatic increase in average temperature in the United States. This summer's unrelenting heat wave, drought and early fire season are examples of what is predicted to become the norm.
The character of Utahns is to solve serious problems together and to build businesses from ingenuity and hard work. Thus, we may thrive in the days ahead, but only if we embrace the coming changes as opportunities rather than inconveniences.
Let's first look at our energy portfolio and consider the cost we pay for the energy we use - the full cost, not just the utility bill.
Coal, for example, is inexpensive to mine and burn to make heat to generate electricity. But the real costs of dealing with global warming from burning coal on a massive scale, and of healing those who suffer from the negative health effects of the gases and particulates spewing from the smoke stacks, are enormous.
Why do you think Santa puts coal in stockings of naughty kids? Indeed, when you consider the full costs of fossil fuels, many renewable energy sources are much cheaper. Let's do an honest accounting, including externalized costs, and then choose what is in the best economic interest of Utah.
Utahns are taught values. While those values may have led us to dismiss concerns of those coffee-sipping, tree-hugging environmentalists in the past, we can no longer hide from the fact that our wanton use of fossil energy is harming our children, killing our elderly, drowning our coastal regions and subjecting our fellow humans to starvation-producing drought, violent storms and terrible heat waves.
Our famous Utah values are now being put to the test. How can we maintain our lifestyles and our ethics? By paying the real cost of our fossil energy use, putting the portion of that cost associated with negative health effects into health care, and the portion associated with global warming into renewable (carbon neutral) energy production technologies. That would be ethics in action.
Don't be dissuaded by those who say "it would hurt the economy." What they are really saying is that "it would hurt their economy." However, a dynamic free-market economy constantly creates losers and winners. Don't cry for Exxon. Cheer for Utah-based renewable energy production industries.
The energy future of Utah can be clean and bright. We have the ingenuity, creativity, resources and ethics to get it right. Let's sharpen our pencils and get busy.
---
* KENT STEWART UDELL is professor and chairman of the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Utah, where he teaches sustainable-energy engineering and engineering ethics.
