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Show Viewpoints The Park Record. A-23 Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, March 9-12, 2019 editorial In gutting bill, lawmakers failed Utah’s most vulnerable youth I letters to the editor More cars in our small town Editor: Figuring out how to move more and more cars around Park City ignores the big question of how to save Park City from more and more cars. If we are still wonderful enough to attract all these visitors, we must be wonderful enough to protect for everyone — locals and tourists. Instead of trying to stuff more cars into this small town, we need to build parking at the perimeter entrances and provide alternative transportation from those hubs. No matter how well too many cars are managed, the best we can hope for is coping with too many cars. By the way, big hotels with large parking areas is far from a good solution. Please, enough. cause, but time is running out. We have an $8.8 million federal grant that expires March 31. It is the biggest land grant ever awarded to a land trust in Utah, and it would be a travesty to not utilize it. The Osguthorpe family has recently reduced the sales price another $500,000, for which we are grateful. Summit Land Conservancy will be holding an open house at the Richins Building in Kimball Junction on Monday, March 11, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Please join us as our executive director, Cheryl Fox, makes a brief presentation and can answer any questions you may have. You can also visit wesaveland.org to make a donation and learn more about saving this 158-acre farm from development. Kathleen Nichols and Wes Siddoway Summit Land Conservancy board leadership Nick Wright Park City t was a disgraceful day in the Utah Legislature. On Tuesday, a House committee, bending to quacks and zealots, gutted a bill that sought to put an end in the state to the inhumane practice of conversion therapy, which involves attempting to “cure” LGBTQ youth by changing their sexual orientation or gender identity. The legislation was bastardized so thoroughly even its sponsor, West Valley City Republican Rep. Craig Hall, voted against it. Rather than delivering an overdue end to conversion therapy, the watered-down bill would permit therapists to talk with patients about changing their sexual orientation, essentially giving practitioners cover to continue performing their methods. It does little, as Hall and advocates for LGBTQ equality have argued, to fulfill the ostensible goal of protecting gay and transgender youth. And that’s as contemptible as anything lawmakers have done on Capitol Hill this year. Putting aside the futility of conversion therapy — a number of medical associations have found there is no credible evidence of its effectiveness — it is unspeakably cruel. The practice has been linked to increased danger of depression and suicide, and according to the American Psychiatric Association, represents “a significant risk of harm” to patients. Society’s obligation to shield our youth from such abuse is evident — except to those clinging to outdated guest editorial Want to improve the Paris Agreement? For starters, how about adding measurable goals BUTCH MAZZUCA Land deal is still possible Avoid a travesty Editor: Bulldozers, backhoes and multi-million dollar homes are a reality on the Osguthorpe Farm if Summit Land Conservancy is unable to raise the last $800,000 it needs to put a permanent conservation easement on the “Green Heart of the Basin.” Our community has generously donated over $4 million to this very worthy The Park Record Staff PUBLISHER ....................... Andy Bernhard Editor ................................... Bubba Brown Staff Writers ......................Jay Hamburger Scott Iwasaki Angelique McNaughton Ben Ramsey Carolyn Webber Alder Editor: Time is almost up but it’s still possible that me can make it happen. $800,000 to save the 158-acre Osguthorpe Farm from development — money must be raised by end of March or a federal grant is lost and that will be the end. It’s a big chunk of open space. But, if 800 people could donate $1,000 or 400 people $2,000, it would be a reality. It’s a lot, but for me continuing to know that the sandhill cranes have a place to congregate made it a no brainer. Please, please, any amount will help! Go to the Summit Land Conservancy website, wesaveland.org. They have said they will return the money if the deal doesn’t go through. I am really hoping it does. Jean Tabin Park City Contributing ............................. Tom Clyde Writers Jay Meehan Teri Orr Amy Roberts Tom Kelly Joe Lair Copy Editor ............................ James Hoyt Engagement Editor..Christopher Samuels Photographer .........................Tanzi Propst Circulation Manager ............. Lacy Brundy Accounting Manager ......... Jennifer Snow ADVERTISING Advertising Director ........... Valerie Spung Advertising Sales ................... Jodi Hecker Erin Donnelly Lindsay Lane Sharon Bush Events Manager ................. Julie Bernhard Production Director ..................Ben Olson Production ........................Chelsea Babbitt Letters Policy The Park Record welcomes letters to the editor on any subject. We ask that the letters adhere to the following guidelines. They must include the home (street) address and telephone number of the author. No letter will be published under an assumed name. Letters must not contain libelous material. Letters should be no longer than about 300 words (about 600 words for guest editorials) and should, if possible, be typed. We reserve the right to edit letters if they are too long or if they contain statements that are unnecessarily offensive or obscene. Writers are limited to one letter every seven days. Letters thanking event sponsors can list no more than 6 individuals and/or businesses. Send your letter to: editor@parkrecord.com For the record views about sexuality and gender identity. Clearly, if not surprisingly, that describes a fair amount of the elected officials in the Utah Legislature. The lawmakers who support the amended bill seem more concerned with preserving the right of parents and therapists to act on the absurd notion that gay and transgender people are defective than they are with protecting some of our most vulnerable people. It would be a mistake to think Utah’s LGBTQ community didn’t get the message loud and clear. The situation is especially unfortunate given the opportunity that was before legislators to set an altogether different tone. No one is under the illusion that most members of the predominantly white male, predominantly LDS, predominantly straight Legislature grasp the experience of being gay or transgender, but passing a strong conversion therapy ban would have nonetheless communicated that it’s OK for LGBTQ youth to be themselves. That there is nothing inherently wrong with them. That, while not everybody in Utah understands them, they are loved and valued the way they are. That they can count the most powerful people in the state among their allies. Instead, lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee sided with people who believe none of those things. In doing so, they revealed plenty about both their own convictions and how far Utah still must come in respecting the humanity of our LGBTQ friends and neighbors. Vail Daily The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change dealing with greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance. It’s “stated goal” was to ensure that global temperatures do not increase more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with an unwritten target of keeping that increase below 1.5 degrees Celsius. The agreement requires all signatories to reach this goal through “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDCs) and to report on their greenhouse emissions. It should be noted however that there were no specific criteria to be met in each nation’s NDC. In fact, there’s not even a requirement to use the term greenhouse gases; rather the protocol stipulates that each signatory set its own goals and then promise to keep them. While the accord has no “standards” per se, it was natural to assume each nation would follow the lead of the United States and set “specific and measurable” goals as former President Obama did when he committed the United States to reduce its greenhouse emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025. But Earth’s other two major polluters weren’t quite as enthusiastic, to wit: China, the world’s largest polluter, committed only “to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030 before starting to bring them down.” India, the world’s third-largest polluter, was even more noncommittal. Its NDC was “to reach a peak at some point in the future, and then begin reducing emissions.” So while the United States promised to reduce it’s carbon emissions by 26-28 percent in eight years, our economic competitors, China and India, told the world they wouldn’t even begin reducing their emissions for well over a decade. Tellingly, there are no enforcement mechanisms within the accord. The UN website addresses the matter this way: “There is no benefit to flouting the Agreement. Any shortterm time gain will be short-lived. It will undoubtedly be overshadowed by negative reactions, by other countries, financial markets, and most important, by their citizens.” As a practical matter, the accord relies on “international peer pressure” to induce governments to spend billions. At the same time, the Nature Conservancy tells us if humanity hopes to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100, it must essentially stop emitting greenhouse gas- es by 2060. Predictably, the delegates couldn’t agree about how to actually accomplish that, so they inserted an absolutely embarrassing “metric” into Article 4, Section 1, to wit: the Agreement’s “written goal” is to peak global greenhouse-gas emissions “as soon as possible.” The most contentious aspect of the Paris Agreement was deciding how to deal with the multi-trillion dollar price tag. Since the accord includes no specific commitments about who pays whom for what or when, the delegates crafted the following: “Item 115: Resolves to enhance the provision of urgent and adequate finance, technology and capacity-building support by developed country Parties in order to enhance the level of ambition of pre-2020 action by Parties and in this regard strongly urges developed country Parties to scale up their level of financial support ...” Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once said the rich world would “... mobilize $100 billion per year to help developing countries make their economies more sustainable and prepare for the storms to come.” Clinton made that statement 10 years ago — has anyone seen the money? It’s not my intent to pick a fight with the climate apocalypticists, but I would be remiss if I didn’t question the seriousness of an agreement that doesn’t have a measurable time-bound goal, is enormously expensive with no funding mechanism and lacks the means to verify, track, monitor and enforce its provisions. The United States had been reducing its carbon footprint since the Bush administration, but carbon emissions went up in 2018 after falling the previous three years. In fact, we again led the world in 2017 by reducing our carbon emissions another 40 million tons. Meanwhile, the signatories to the agreement cumulatively increased their greenhouse gas emissions by ten times the amount we reduced ours. The signatory nations will go only as far as their respective budgets and economies allow. President Donald Trump acknowledged this reality when he pulled the U.S. out of the accord. He has said that the American taxpayer is not going to pick up the tab; if this is a cooperative effort, you need to pay your fair share. Quote of the day: “If climate science is settled, why do its predictions keep changing?” — Charles Krauthammer Butch Mazzuca is a columnist for the Vail Daily, a sister paper to The Park Record based in Avon, Colorado. Photos by Christopher Samuels Asked at Park City Library How would you grade the 2019 session of the Utah Legislature? Janessa Colton Salt Lake City “If you’re a member of the LDS Church, probably an A. If you’re not a member, then a C-. The medical marijuana bill was pretty ridiculous, and the beer increase not being passed as well.” Jerry Otto Summit Park “Well the fact that they’re changing (propositions) after the fact isn’t so great, especially with Medicaid (expansion). I think they’re doing a terrible job. Any time we get a little bit of progress, we go backwards.” Kristen Carey Trailside “They covered a lot of topics. There wasn’t anything specific (to mention), but it seems pretty standard for Utah what they were upholding, and I’m not surprised. A pretty typical legislative year.” Rachelle McEwen Silver Springs “The (propositions) that were passed, I thought were really good, but the Legislature went and redid them and passed them in a different way. The one that comes to the top of my mind is the medical marijuana bill and (they) changed it to mean something completely different.” See these photos and more by following The Park Record on Facebook.com/parkrecord and Instagram.com/parkrecord |