Senior Will Munger, captain of the Logan High's Policy Debate Team and president of the Logan Environmental Action Force (LEAF) club, wants city officials to join him and two dozen other LEAF members to take “critical” action regarding to so-called Kyoto Protocols.

“All you have to do is come to Cache Valley in the winter to see the problem. We have inversions every month,” Munger said. “We have trouble riding our bikes because we can't breathe. It would be foolish not to act.”

At a meeting of the Logan City Council earlier this month, Munger praised outgoing Mayor Doug Thompson for a long list of environmentally friendly efforts over the past eight years, while asking him to “do one more act of courage and vision” for Cache Valley's future.

LEAFs want Logan's elected leaders to make the Cache Valley community the state's fourth city - and the nation's 189th city - to endorse the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. That already has been done in Salt Lake City, Park City and Moab, and several of the resolution's tenets already are under way in Logan, according to club mentor Jack Greene.

Of course, the student activists are making their pitch ever so delicately.

Munger said it is not by accident that the discussion with Logan officials made no mention of the word “Kyoto,” which has become increasingly controversial since March 2001 when President Bush announced his opposition to the 1997 international accord setting limits on greenhouse-gas emissions.

“The reason we don't call it that is we are trying to make this as apolitical as possible,” Munger said. “For activists, this isn't really a Democrat or Republican issue: It's a matter of survival.”

The benefits of endorsing the agreement would be immediate to Logan City and Cache Valley residents, Munger believes.

Environmental safeguards would reduce energy-related expenses for the city and improve air quality by reducing emissions.

On a larger scale, the student activists say the agreement will help national defense by reducing dependence on foreign oil.

Logan Councilman Steve Thompson said he fully supports the students' proposal and plans to ask the his colleagues to pass the resolution.

“It's a great idea. Leave it to the youth, who have a vision of the future, to bring that to the council,” Steve Thompson said. “Mayor [Doug] Thompson has already moved us in that direction."