By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
Climate change is a topic many people try to avoid, but as a part of Earth Week at Fort Hays State University Tony Schmidt, of the Citizen’s Climate Lobby, hopes to spark conversations about the economic realities of maintaining the status-quo of energy mostly coming from fossil fuels.
The lobby will have a table set up in the Memorial Union lobby from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday and Schmidt will facilitate a workshop at 6 p.m. in the Memorial Union Ballroom.
“I will do everything in my power to help them see how important this issue is,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt has been working with students on the FHSU campus to set up a local chapter of the organization in conjunction with chapters established in Wichita, Salina and Lawerence.
“Citizens Climate Lobby is a new group that has been started on the Fort Hays campus,” Schmidt said. “The fieldwork and leadership class has selected Citizens Climate Lobby as its semester project to try and get a community-based group started.”
Schmidt is the state coordinator for the lobby, that has a unique approach to tackling climate change – economics.
“We have one simple goal and that is passing of a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend,” he said.
That fee would be distributed to citizens as a rebate that would further stimulate the economy.
“It’s simply assigning the true cost of fossil fuels,” Schmidt said, noting fossil fuels will become more expensive in the future as the supply dwindles.
A big part of the lobby’s argument is that a transition to clean energy would also create jobs and develop the economy.
“The way it does that is it sends a clear market signal to innovators and entrepreneurs that there will be a market there for them to do something new and help us with this transition,” Schmidt said.
Rather than focus on doom-and-gloom climate change projections, Schmidt feels the lobby will have more success in creating a conversation about the conversion from fossil fuels as more people become active in the lobby and speak more openly with local legislators.
The lobby is organized by congressional district, rather than running a nationwide campaign. Their efforts so far have already yielded some successes as Republican legislators have begun to embrace the reality of climate change.
“We’re really excited at Citizens Climate Lobby because we’ve got 13 Republican congressmen who are acknowledging that climate change is a man-made problem and we need to something,” Schmit said. “We would like for the Republican Party to be leadership on this issue.”
The lobby understands, however, the challenge of the change from fossil fuels to newer clean energy, but argues as prices continue to rise it is economically wise to diversify energy production calling the transition wonderful for the economy.
“We don’t really have a choice from an economic standpoint it’s going to be much cheaper to address this,” Schmidt said. “We are certainly not against oil, we’re not against coal, we’re not against natural gas, but what we are for is the transition to clean energy.”
But in an oil town, arguing that oil production should slow is problematic, something the lobby fully understands.
“This is a tricky one because we are in a very oil-oriented state, in Hays particularly,” Schmidt said but believes “Economically, there is a bright future for Kansas with clean energy.”
Working with the group at FHSU and arming people with information, he believes, will help spread the message that citizens are in favor of an energy transition and will then give politicians the political capital to argue for clean energy.
That message is well served by students, he said, that are not yet influenced by being in the workforce.
“The students’ charge and my hopeful feelings are that they will be more successful than your average citizen at getting people to consider this issue.”