This story was originally published by Capital and Head.
Driving down Interstate 215 south of Salt Lake City in late January, I couldn’t help but notice the bumper stickers on the van in front of me. One featured a rattlesnake and the classic slogan “Don’t Tread on Me,” which dates back to the Revolutionary War but has been co-opted by many right-wing ideologues. And the other has a map of a shrinking lake and the words “Keep the Salt Lake Great,” the motto of a local environmental group focused on protecting Utah’s rivers and ecosystems.
Those dual views perfectly capture the ethos of Utah, a deep red state whose natural beauty is threatened by more intense heat waves and extreme drought. A proud coal and oil producing state, it is led by conservative lawmakers, and recent national surveys show it is one of the most Republican states in the country. Back in 2010, the Utah legislature even passed a resolution that essentially wrote climate change denial into state policy by urging the EPA to “halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies, programs and regulations until climate data and global warming science are substantiated.”
But since then, Utah has been more affected by climate change than most states — over the past 50 years, temperatures in the state have risen approx. twice the global average, and it has faced worsening drought, wildfires, flash floods and extreme heat waves. The impact was devastating on the health and well-being of residents, with declining farm productivity and higher rates of respiratory illnesses and asthma, along with other heat-related illnesses.
And climate change has seriously damaged one of the state’s natural wonders — that map on the trucker’s bumper sticker reveals how climate change has shrunk the Great Salt Lakes footprint by half in recent decades due to the reduced flow of mountain streams feeding the lake and increased demand for fresh water for new development and agriculture.
The crisis has also raised climate awareness in the state, with half of the residents in a recent survey say that climate change is an extremely or very serious problem and 64 percent say they have noticed significant effects of climate change over the past 10 years.
“For voters, climate has become a bigger issue than it has been in the past,” said Josh Kraft, government and corporate relations manager for Utah Clean Energy, a public interest group that launched a historic agreement in 2020 that more if 100 gathered. of the state’s political and business leaders to stimulate support for clean energy and spark conversations about climate action and clean air solutions.
That bipartisan concern about climate change is now impacting politics in the state — where two self-professed climate candidates are running to replace Mitt Romney in the U.S. Senate. In total, there are five GOP candidates vote more than 3 percent and three Democratic candidates participate in the June 25 primary.
In the Republican primaries, the front-runner, US Rep. John Curtis, the need to address the climate crisis, and calls for more support for clean energy. He founded and leads the conservative climate caucus in Congress and blames his party for not taking climate change seriously.
“We want to work together as Republicans and Democrats because at the end of the day we all care about leaving the earth better than we found it,” Curtis recently told the Sierra Club. “That’s how I talk about it — who doesn’t want to leave the Earth better than we found it?”
But climate activists are dubious, claiming that Curtis is too reliant on industry-friendly solutions like carbon capture and opposes some of President Biden’s signature climate accomplishments, including the Inflation Reduction Act.
In the Democratic primary, mountaineer and environmental activist Caroline Gleich made climate action and air quality a key focus of her campaign. She called on state lawmakers to take action to increase water flows to the Great Salt Lake as part of a larger climate agenda that includes cutting fossil fuel subsidies, taking advantage of Inflation Reduction Act funds aimed at to the use of renewable energy in the state, and the protection of public lands. “Our mountains, our skies, our rivers and lakes, our lives deserve respect,” Gleich said repeatedly.
Still, she sees a disconnect between public support for climate action and the policies pursued by the state’s political leadership, noting that the Legislature recently voted to increase the tax on EV charging and to reduce the tax on gasoline . “And if you look at who’s funding these candidates, you see there’s a large amount of oil and gas and fossil fuel companies giving money to them,” Gleich said.
Indeed, Curtis is a big receiver — his district includes an area known as Carbon County because of its abundance of coal and natural gas, and he accepted $265,000 of the oil and gas industry-linked political action committees since 2017. Curtis did not return calls from Capital & Main for comment.
Gleich’s view is echoed by Zach Frankel of the Utah Rivers Council, an environmental group that distributes the Great Salt Lake bumper stickers. “We’re in a state of climate change denial – politicians can say it’s real in an election year, but when we start asking them whether we should adopt climate-adaptive policies, they say no. They assume any crisis is decades away .”
Frankel is encouraged by the growing public concern about climate issues, such as the shrinking Great Salt Lake – the largest remaining wetland ecosystem in the American West – and the growing frustration with the lack of action.
“The state of Utah has refused to accept any kind of meaningful policy plan to raise lake levels“ he said, predicting that “it’s going to have to get worse before it gets better.”
Like elsewhere in the country, younger voters appear to be in the state more galvanized as older voters on the issue and demand action. At a climate strike on the steps of the Utah Statehouse last year, activists condemned the Legislature for not making serious efforts to reduce emissions. A lawmaker’s move to reduce emissions at US Magnesium, which harvests lithium and magnesium from the Great Salt Lake, has been scaled back after a mere study of the effects of pollutants created in the process.
“Young people are disproportionately affected by eco-anxiety because it’s their future,” said Gleich, who at 38 is the youngest candidate in the Senate race. “That is what is at stake in this election.”
