ST. GEORGE — Two local science teachers, Shaunna Goldberry and Trevor Anderson, spent their Earth Day working a booth at the Book Bungalow, located at 94 W. Tabernacle Street.
Along with Citizens Climate Lobby member Jean Lown, Golberry and Anderson were on hand to recommend books and talk with patrons about climate change in an educational outreach.
“I am a teacher here in town, at St. George Academy,” Anderson said. “Every year I get to teach eighth graders about climate change. It’s part of the state curriculum. And I am here today to try and do more to get a carbon fee put into place. A carbon tax is one of the best options we have.”
Goldberry, who teaches at Utah Arts Academy, said students there designed and created wooden Earth Day tokens with the motto, Invest In Our Planet, which Goldberry said is the motto for Earth Day, 2023.
According to a press release, Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson spearheaded the first Earth Day celebration on April 22, 1970. Fifty-three years later the annual event brings awareness about climate change and spurs efforts that limit fossil fuel use and curb greenhouse gas emissions.
According to its website, the Citizens Climate Lobby Salt Lake City chapter consists of “regular people from Utah who are working together to get climate laws passed. We believe that the only way to tackle climate change is together.”
“I’m trying to promote the Citizens Climate Lobby and interest in our changing climate,” Lown told St. George News. “Helping people educate themselves with a bunch of books that are all available in Washington County libraries so that they can learn about climate change.”
At the Book Bungalow booth, patrons placed a Skittles candy into a test tube representing where they were on the scale of concern about climate change, from very concerned and afraid on one hand to not concerned or worried on the other.
Lown said that Citizens Climate Lobby focuses efforts on crafting legislation that would create a tax on carbon use. Big oil producers would be taxed according to how much carbon they produce. Those tax funds would then be dispersed to American citizens who make efforts to curb their own greenhouse gas emissions.
“Basically, the Citizens Climate Lobby is trying to get a price on carbon, which would then be paid in dividends to all Americans,” Lown said, citing the state of Alaska’s practice of paying residents a yearly dividend out of oil revenue as an example of how a carbon tax could work.
“We’re also trying to promote healthy forests, particularly in cities like in Salt Lake City, the west side is so much hotter and more polluted than the east side, so trying to get more urban trees,” Lown said.
Building electrical infrastructure and improving efficiency in the power grid is a top lobbying priority as well, she added.
“We’ve got solar, wind and geothermal potential in Utah that is over the top. Just fantastic,” she said, adding that these alternative sources of energy are in rural areas of the state, making transmission to the cities very complicated.
“We’re promoting ways, trying to get Congress to act, to make it much more simple and straightforward and to speed up the process,” Lown said. “We’re working on clean energy permitting reforms and promoting things like electric vehicles.”
The booth at the Book Bungalow was graced by the presence of Porter and Cecilia, two service dogs who seemed eager to get out in the climate on Earth Day rather than worry about it too much.
Photo Gallery
Citizens Climate Lobby member Jean Lown at an Earth Day booth at the Book Bungalow, St. George, Utah, April 22, 2023 | Photo by E. George Goold, St. George News
Citizens Climate Lobby member Jean Lown shows a book she recommends about climate change education, St. George, Utah, April 22, 2023 | Photo by E. George Goold, St. George News
Therapy dogs Cecilia (top) and Porter (bottom) at an Earth Day event at the Book Bungalow, St. George, Utah, April 22, 2023 | Photo by E. George Goold, St. George News
(L to R) Shaunna Goldberry, Jean Lown and Trevor Anderson at an Earth Day event at the Book Bungalow, St. George, Utah, April 22, 2023 | Photo by E. George Goold, St. George News
Science teacher Shaunna Goldberry shows the Earth Day tokens designed by students at Utah Arts Academy, St. George, Utah, April 22, 2023 | Photo by E. George Goold, St. George News
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2023, all rights reserved.