Community Engagement 1: Clean Air Forum

I attended the Clean Air Forum hosted in the Udvar Hazy Building. It was an interesting experience. The presentations were informational and engaging. A lot of questions from the audience provoked deeper thoughts and even more questions.

            I went into it excited to learn more about protecting our planet. For the most part that feeling stayed. However, this forum didn’t necessarily discuss multiple things that we can do to be nicer to our planet. It focused on the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (more on that in a later paragraph). Rather than working together as a community to talk about simple solutions that we can start acting on now this forum provided information about a legislation that has been years in the making and may still be a while before it is approved and put into action.

            This clean air forum had a lot of great information, focusing on how to move towards cleaner air energy, with an emphasis on how solve this with legislation. One of the presenters gave three suggestions on how Utah can help: (1) reducing greenhouse emissions, (2) improving air quality, and (3) producing an economy that works for everyone. A solution for #2 would be to educate the citizens on how to improve the local air quality. This forum hoped to encourage the St. George locals to move to clean solar energy, create energy independence, lower the costs of energy, and to provide an excellent quality of life.

            The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act has five key benefits: (1) effectiveness, (2) good for the people because it would bring money to people’s pockets every month, (3) good for the economy because it would create jobs, (4) revenue neutral, (5) bipartisan. Basically, there would be a carbon fee of about $15/ton; the fee would rise $10 every year, until 2050. The following year that money would be distributed back to the people, starting at $20/person. This would affect imports and exports, making the United States equal to other countries. www.energyinnovationact.org also provides great information about this act.

            I learned a lot from the experience. My family uses to coal to heat our home, because my father is a foreman at a powerplant that is heated by coal. Although I understand that many people do not support the use of coal, because of the air that it emits, the smell, and for other reasons, I still support the use of this fossil fuel. Now this likely seems contradictory, especially since I am in this class. However, I have come to this conclusion for myself, after research and hearing both negative and positive effects that coal can have on the environment. I believe that there is no one ‘right’ way to treat the environment and to live. There are, of course, other ways to heat a home and town than with coal; I support those ideas. However, I don’t think that we should stop using coal altogether. It is there for a purpose, so we should use it. Perhaps going towards using it sparingly and implementing the use of other methods would be a step forward, though.