By Dan Olsen
On the heels of the most recent global climate strike, and just as Salt Lake City International Airport was diverting twenty-seven flights due to record-setting smog and elevated levels of PM 2.5, we are looking to the young people of Utah for inspiration to continue the fight to save our planet.
High school and college students across the state, many too young to vote, have taken on an impressive amount of responsibility in demanding accountability from our lawmakers and civic leaders.
In March, after first meeting with Governor Herbert’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Mike Mower, to express concerns regarding carbon emissions and receiving an unsatisfactory response, Utah youth led a sit-in at Governor Herbert’s office. Knowing the BLM has a history of listening to governors, the young people who held the sit-in showed the Governor that simply acknowledging that climate change is real is not enough; it must be accompanied by significant action.
The students delivered their demands for action in the form of a letter calling on the Governor to remove BLM land in Utah from the impending oil and gas lease sale. Unfortunately, when the oil and gas lease sale list was ultimately released, 156 parcels totaling over 217,000 acres were included–the largest oil and gas lease sale in Utah since 2008. In some cases, land was leased for as low as $2.00 per acre. What’s more, operators pay an annual rent of just $1.50 per acre–a figure that has not been updated or adjusted for inflation since 1987.
Mishka Banuri, a 2019 West High School graduate and a co-founder of Utah Youth for Environmental Solutions (pictured above), let the Governor know exactly how she felt in a commentary for The Salt Lake Tribune, writing “Herbert has failed my generation. By acknowledging climate change but not following through with substantive action to dramatically reduce carbon emissions, the governor is knowingly sacrificing our future.”
Utah Youth for Environmental Solutions (UYES) also organized a protest at the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) on Earth Day. SITLA regulates lands in Utah that have been specifically earmarked to create revenue for certain state institutions, including schools. Currently, oil and gas, land swaps adjacent to national parks, and other environmentally damaging initiatives are responsible for the lion’s share of this revenue.
While expressing appreciation that programs at their schools are able to exist because of funding from SITLA, the students of UYES and those who joined their protest also made it clear that moving away from reliance on fossil fuels is absolutely essential–moving to a die-in demonstration for a period of the protest. This display of the grim future that lies ahead lasted for seven minutes–one minute for each member of the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration.
Andie Madsen, a current West High student, pointed out in a Sierra Club Press Release that “Trusts are designed to endure and provide benefits generation after generation without a foreseeable end.” Surely, it should follow, that a trust such as SITLA would be interested in shifting its revenue generating tactics to focus on renewable sources rather than from elements which actively and rapidly contribute to the degeneration of our planet.
The young people in our state again showed up in great numbers at the state Capitol on December 6th, electing to voice their concerns for the environment over attending class.
“The planet is more important than my future,” Madsen told the Deseret News following the event, which took place during the UN’s annual climate conference.
As global climate strikes and other forms of activism continue to pressure local and world leaders to act in protection of the future of our planet, Utahns and people across the world alike should follow the lead of our youth in accepting nothing less than decisive and immediate action from our lawmakers.