Rep. John Curtis has some Explaining to Do

I read an article in the Deseret News, which is one of our Salt Lake City newspapers. It's titled, "When it coms to climate change, the world may be identifying the wrong enemy." It quotes my congressman, John Curtis, and Benji Backer, founder of the American Conservation Coalition. 

I am at a loss. I wish I could sit down with Curtis and ask for some explanations. For one, he goes after electric vehicles, saying "they’re not the best environmentally friendly answer.” Nothing like going against conventional wisdom, but when you make a statement like that, you better back it up. Why are EVs not the answer? Are you saying they don't cause more greenhouse gases than do gasoline-powered vehicles? If you make a statement like that, you better explain because what you are saying does not at all make sense. And he points to how the cars in the parking lot are all gas-powered, and mocks a UN official, saying, “I’d be curious to ask him how he got to work in the morning. How he gets around when he flies — because as far as I know, there aren’t any electric planes.” John, that there are no electric planes does not prove a thing. They are working on that technology, but it is not one that we are arriving at in good time, just as carbon-capture isn't being arrived at in good time. Just because electric planes don't work, it doesn't mean we should let Big Oil run hog wild and have their way in all other transportation sectors. And Curtis launches into an argument of how oil is in everything, as if since you can't get rid of them, then that means they are okay. Good logic there, I guess. “I wonder if he (the UN official) hasn’t noticed that fossil fuels are in his cellphone or in his clothing, they’re in his carpet. ... Everything he uses has got fossil fuels.” I would suggest to Mr. Curtis that our cellphones are not causing harmful emissions. My clothing is not emitting harmful emissions. It takes harmful emissions to create them, but they are not blackening our skies from pollutants being emitted from them as we walk around in them. Cars, on the other hand, do have that problem. 

The “fossil fuel industry isn’t the enemy. The emissions are,” says Benji Backer. Okay. Fine. Now, aren't the emissions being generated by fossil fuels? Somehow, that seems to make the fossil fuel industry the problem. Just sayin'. Curtis uses the word "disingenuous" in making his argument. But, frankly, it seems he and Backer are the ones being disingenuous.

We know John Curtis gets nice ampaign contributions from Big Oil. We should wonder if Backer's American Conservation Coalition is at least partially funded by the coal and oil industries. You know what they say -- follow the money.

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