Anyone traveling along Interstate 15 has seen LaVar Christensen’s campaign billboard: “America needs Utah.”
LaVar is right, America does need Utah.
America needs Utah to be a leader in a new West that values the environment and recognizes the dangers of unchecked sprawl.
America needs Utah’s industrious, proactive commitment and vision–which was demonstrated by the state’s pioneers when settling this strip of high desert–to address the need of alternative energy and environmental responsibility.
What America does not need is more of the same stuck thinking that has been demonstrated by the Republican Party for the last six years. Many of the GOP candidates understood this, and they distanced themselves from the Bush administration and its extreme rightwing position.
Yet Christensen takes pride in his connection with Bush. As The Salt Lake Tribune reported, he is the only congressional candidate in the country to feature Dubya in campaign ads in his quest to be another yes-man for the president from the state of Utah.
Christensen likes to highlight the same issues–“family values”–that the far right has focused on in the last three elections to distract voters from analyzing more important policy. Christensen and the far right think that our children will be better off if the government discriminates against gay people, abolishes a woman’s freedom to choose and imposes “select” (aka convenient) Christian doctrine upon the Constitution (“Thou shalt not kill innocent people in the Middle East” does not fall under such doctrine).
Instead of harping on “family values” that divide and polarize this nation but have little to do with America’s quality of life, Republican politicians need to understand that there are more pressing and real values at stake here, things that really do affect our children–like air quality and energy conservation.
There are Republicans, such as Duane Millard, who are aware of such issues. Millard is running for the state House of Representatives from District 40. Although Millard wants to open up parts of southern Utah for oil exploration, he does see a need for regulation that would curb Utah’s pollution problem.
“I would be supportive of a mandate that made cars more fuel-efficient,” he said.
Of course, Millard’s opponent–Lynn Hemingway–aggressively pursues environmentally friendly legislation as well, which is often the case for Democrats.
Let’s face it: Global warming is real, and its effect will be felt soon if it is not addressed. Christensen feels that “we need verifiably accurate data” and that “we can’t just go off with an unverified premise (of global warming) to pass more laws and regulation.” Again, this view is in line with an administration that continues to disregard global warming evidence that has been verified by 99 percent of the scientific community.
Christensen and the far right would rather pass laws and regulations governing individuals’ private lives instead of forcing private industry to decrease its pollution.
America needs leaders that have the vision to see that the current course of the nation is environmentally unsustainable. America needs leaders that are willing to adopt legislation to change this course to ensure a livable world for our children. And America needs some of those leaders to come from Utah.
