Moral Support
For a guy who covered the Jazz and NBA, reporter Andy Larsen has found new life in the numbers game. Now, if we could only get people to read his stories in The Salt Lake Tribune. Larsen started crunching numbers when COVID hit, telling us the horrific facts about hospitalizations and deaths in Utah. Now, guess what? He thought he'd look at the abortion issue, brave soul that he is. Larsen was able to look at 14 polls from 1970 to 2020. He found that 80% of Utahns think abortion should be legal in some circumstances. That's close to the national norm, according to Fivethirtyeight, which put support for legal access at 85% to 90% of Americans. Even in 1990, 57% of Utahns didn't want the state to take a lead on overturning Roe. "You all know how the Utah Legislature operates: Lawmakers ignored the willof the voters two months later." Larsen suggested that legislators rethink their hard-line position. How likely is that?
Much Ado
It's no wonder why the news of Republicans fighting the ESG rating system didn't make the news much. No one really understands what it is. Maybe because we're in Utah, you figure if the GOP thinks it's bad, it must be bad. What is it? "An ESG score is a measure of a company's exposure to long-term environmental, social and governance risks ... often overlooked during traditional financial analyses," according to Conservice-ESG. These are risks like energy efficiency, worker safety and board diversity. So when the Heritage Foundation weighed in on what Utah thought, it was no surprise they don't like ESG. "Fundamentally, economic freedom—not the environmental, social and governance agenda—makes the world cleaner, safer and better governed," Heritage said. And there, in a nutshell, is the Utah Way.
Stop the Bleeding
It's always interesting how the media dances around the real environmental problem we face. Now, with water on the mind of everyone—including the governor and Legislature—the call is for conservation amid dire threats to life itself. Last week, the Bureau of Reclamation cut water deliveries to the Colorado River Lower Basin states by nearly a half-million acre-feet, according to the Deseret News. That's a lot. The detailed report talked of challenges and the fact that it's not a long-term solution. What's the long-term solution? "We can control our demands and how quickly we develop and implement solutions," said Taylor Hawes of The Nature Conservancy. Yes. "Implement solutions." Good luck on that without talking about climate change, fossil fuels and moving into alternative energy sources. The DNews did give us a "fun fact" about illegal dumping gone bad: Decades-old bodies have been turning up as the water level goes down in Lake Mead.
About The Author
Katharine Biele
A City Weekly contributor since 1992, Katharine Biele is the informed voice behind our Hits & Misses column. When not writing, you can catch her working to empower voters and defend democracy alongside the League of Women Voters.
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