Matt’s Blog

I’ve already posted about Salt Lake City’s great program to address obvious environmental concerns. Today I went to a meeting regarding that program and the issues of global warming that it attempts to address. The main part of the meeting was a talk given by the mayor of Salt Lake City, Rocky Anderson. His presentation was much like Al Gore’s famous global warming presentation, but he also highlighted the many great things that the city’s government, businesses, and citizens are doing to combat global warming. It was really a great thing to see so many people come out and support measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in today’s world. Thanks to great leaders like Mayor Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City, I feel optimistic for the future of Earth. Rocky also announced today that he won’t be seeking a third term as mayor of Salt Lake, but will instead focus on encouraging grassroots organizations in the areas of human rights and global warming. Many in Salt Lake will be sad to see him go, but I’m sure he’ll continue to work for issues outside of his mayoral career just as fervently as he did inside of it.

So said Thomas Friedman on NPR’s “On Point” tonight.  I can’t agree more.  He cried out against government funded energy subsidies as repressors of innovation in the area of alternative energy sources.  Again, I find it difficult to disagree.  In fact, Mr. Friedman is in favor of a gasoline tax in order to drive down consumption of oil and spur research into green energy.  And since I’m a guy with a blog, I’ll insert my opinion here:  Let the gas tax be levied only against those that do not strive for efficiency, commuters who drive alone and don’t carpool (I’m one of these, unfortunately) not against carpoolers, hev owners, and those who depend on transportation for the main income of their business.  Hard to administrate I think, but that threatens the economy the least.

One of the callers summed it up best when he said, “The government can legislate morality, so it should be able to legislate conservation as well”

The obsession with oil continues. I’ve been hearing on the news that the government is considering issuing gas rebate checks to drivers for up to $100. Why don’t we put that money into renewable energy research?

I watched a movie about global warming the other day. It was pretty interesting. I still find that a lot of people don’t really believe in it though, and I’m ok with it. Because global warming probably doesn’t need to be on the forefront of every environmental discussion. Really, all of the causes of global warming have short term effects as well as long term ones. After all, it’s pretty difficult not to believe in pollution, tropical storms and rising sea levels. Not to mention traffic jams. These things all exist, there’s no denying it. And even better, there’s simple things that we can all do to combat them. Here’s a place you can go to find a few: e2citizen

And if you live in Salt Lake City be sure and sign up!