For instance, when one of the governor's advisers started explaining this week why Utah is part of a regional carbon cap-and-trade program, Rep. Mike Noel fired back: "So, you drank the Kool-Aid, too."
The Kanab Republican, a proponent of nuclear power, also told a fellow legislator: "You understand, when you are breathing, you are polluting. I don't think it's polluting to breathe, that's my point."
Other members of the Legislature's Public Utilities and Technology Interim Committee suggested it was wrongheaded to try cutting climate pollution because it would hurt Utah's economy and consumers.
Department of Environmental Quality Director Rick Sprott and Huntsman's energy adviser, Dianne Nielson, discussed how, under the Western Climate Initiative that Huntsman joined last year, participating states have until 2012 to start a cap-and-trade program to control six gases blamed for climate change. To meet that requirement, Huntsman needs lawmakers to create a joint legislative-executive branch task force to design a kind of stock exchange where the commodities traded are carbon pollution and carbon pollution avoided.
Utah should be at the bargaining table to make sure "Western common sense" is part of any carbon regulation adopted by Congress, they told the committee.
Sen. Scott Jenkins, R-Plain City, urged his colleagues not to be so tough on Huntsman's representatives. He described a summer meeting with a European energy minister who said that climate-change doubters there would be laughed out of office.
"This is the reality," he said, "This is not something people are just talking about."
The governor's office Thursday defended its work developing a market-based approach to climate change that works for Utah and expressed optimism that lawmakers will join the effort.
"We're working with key legislators as we always do with every important issue," said Lisa Roskelley, Huntsman's spokeswoman.
