Brian Moench: An entire fleet of asteroids is coming at us from all directions
UPHE’s founder and board president, Dr. Brian Moench, wrote an excellent Op-Ed for the Tribune, relating the metaphor of the film “Don’t Look Up” to America and Utah’s current political culture. If you haven’t seen it yet- “The plot is astronomers discover a massive asteroid headed for a direct strike on Earth with a 100% certainty of destroying all human life. It’s a comical dissection of America drowning in stupidity, self-absorption, adolescent obsession with celebrity and trivia, and paralyzed to address the impending annihilation of humankind.” Dr. Moench writes.
He then goes on to describe the many asteroids barrelling towards America, including, racism, sexism, income inequality, and the many reckless projects embraced by the Utah legislature.
“Utah’s business leaders indulge in their personal real estate fantasies at everyone else’s expense: the dirty energy inland port, more drying up of the Great Salt Lake courtesy of the Bear River Project, the Lake Powell pipeline, carving a huge new open pit mine in Parley’s Canyon and cramming a new city of 500,000 onto a fake island in the middle of Utah Lake.”
We need the Utah Legislature to LOOK UP and pay attention to the destruction and damage inflicted on Utah by moving forward with these projects. We need them to support legislation like HB 164- which offers free public transportation, reducing toxic emissions, and oppose, vehemently, legislation like HB 232 which repeats the mistakes of the Inland Port process.