During a Logan City Council meeting on Jan. 7, more than 30 residents spoke out against the city’s proposed involvement in a 30-year, $300 million contract supporting the development of a fossil fuel plant in Power County, Idaho.
The citizens who spoke cited the harmful effects of air pollution, the uncertainty and expensive cost of a continued reliance on fossil fuels, the necessity to be bold and move towards renewables, and the moral imperative to begin taking conservation measures in order to advocate for future generations as their reasons to deny the motion. I was one of these people.
I left Utah at the age of 18 to pursue an education. Before I left, I was infected with the mountaineering bug. During my senior year of high school, I spent my free time exploring the Wasatch Range, coming to know and love it as a place that was alive and uniquely beautiful in and of itself. Contrasted with a life spent in the suburban expanses of Salt Lake Valley, my experiences in the out-of-doors showed me something about my home that has informed every decision — from moral judgments to job choices — ever since.
Upon returning to Utah for summer breaks, I noticed that there was more development every time I came back. I watched Utah’s capital and the surrounding areas become even more enveloped in development, data centers and tech companies, all along with the misleading and nefarious language of progress, growth and economy. These are words frequently employed by our leaders to suggest that the choices they have made for us, rather than with us, are to our benefit. Jobs are necessary, energy is necessary, food and quality of life are necessary, but these things are never going to be genuine or sustainable without first attending to the land we live on, the air we breathe and the water we rely on. The language of progress, as we know it now, as so many environmental writers in the past have recognized, is necrophilic; they represent the death of life and the death of the liberty to choose our future.
During the city council meeting, I noted that Logan is a humble town, but a growing one. Here, we have not yet felt the abusive hands of progress as much as other areas of Utah, but they are doing their best to find us. Logan may not be as in touch with the land as it needs to be, but there is something worth preserving in what it has now. The forces of progress and industry that have exerted their influence in too many other places of the world are not what we need to make Logan better. They will destroy it, as they have all the other places they’ve reached.
Democracy is supposed to be a government decided by the people. Some people I have met in Logan serve to illustrate why we need to speak out against fossil fuel dependence. I’ve met naturalists and educators who know every bird, plant and stone, who have spent a lifetime in Logan in order to do so. I have met journalists who work upwards from the community to represent the multitude of voices crying out against the slow violence imposed upon them by industry. I have met farmers who work with the land and understand that adapting to the conditions already present is much more effective and rewarding than industrial imposition. I have met people who care for this place, and that care is based on an intimate knowledge. It is based on love.
On Jan. 7, I saw the Logan City Council listen to their constituents who spoke out against fossil fuels — not because they are crackpot radicals, though I personally consider the term a compliment, but because they knew that growth without measure, development and human life without love and knowledge of the places it occurs upon, are exactly the mistakes that have already been made. We practiced dialogue, a foundation of democracy, and we won a small but powerful victory: Logan was the only city in the state to deny the contract.
I want to see more Utahns, more Americans, speak out against industrial control of public policy. Though Logan’s energy future is uncertain, it isn’t tied as tightly to the leash of an energy source that is rapidly depleting our ability to live on the planet that sustains us. This issue is not a red and blue one. The choices we make must be bold for the future we want, and we must untether ourselves from the necrotic energy source that is fossil fuel. We need to use less, and we need to demand more from the folks who are supposed to represent us. I believe we can.
(Dax Gove) Dax Gove is a graduate student/instructor at Utah State University.
Dax Gove is a graduate student/instructor at Utah State University pursuing a master’s in literature, culture and composition focusing on place studies and ecopedagogy. He loves being an English teacher, his partner Abby and their two cats. While he is a university employee, this commentary is entirely of his own volition as a private citizen and does not represent the views of the university.
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