Panelists at Utah Governor's Energy Summit acknowledge demonstration with discussion of protestors' issues

The protest was brief — only about three minutes — but the ensuing discussion about it took a little longer.

A group of perhaps 20 environmentalists took over the stage at the Governor’s Energy Summit in late May in Salt Lake City, standing in front of a panel discussing energy policy. They held up signs and banners and chanted, “Your time is up; people are rising,” prompting boos and catcalls from the crowd. Eventually, the lights were dimmed and music turned up to drown out the chants before the group was ushered off the stage.

After their departure, panelists — including the U.S. energy secretary, two governors and an energy company executive — commended the protestors’ passion but suggested that their complaints were misdirected, misguided or aired at the wrong venue.

“We do appreciate the youthful enthusiasm and we saw that demonstrated here today, and their voices need to be heard, considered, respected,” said Utah Gov. Gary Herbert. “Sometimes we don’t dialogue well, we don’t understand, sometimes we get offended easily … and having the opportunity to communicate is something we should do better.

“I would say this, though: What we’ve talked about today and what they want us to do, is provide cleaner fuels. That’s happening. They want it to happen now, but the practical reality is it takes some time to transition without crashing the economy. They would like us to quit by Friday [and] not take anything out of the ground. That obviously doesn’t work, from a practical standpoint. We’re doing some good things here and I appreciate the work of many people here doing it.”

Herbert suggested the protestors start their own conference: “Have your own conference and see how many people show up that would support your cause, rather than to come and disrupt what we’ve done here. …”

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon said many of the environmental woes cited by protestors are occurring beyond the borders of the United States.

“The problem is that we in this country have tried to suggest that a 100 percent renewable portfolio is somehow going to address climate change,” Gordon said. “It will reduce the amount of carbon we release in the atmosphere domestically, not globally, but domestically reduce the increase of that, but it doesn’t take carbon out of the atmosphere. It doesn’t address climate change.”

Gordon said he is frustrated that instead of having a “good conversation,” the sides of the energy development/environmental disputes become polarized.

“And as part of that polarization, we will not listen to the other. And these folks had really good points to make. It was a lovely song. But let’s do something about getting carbon out of the atmosphere. … That’s the innovation that I feel we need to have.”

Rick Perry, U.S. energy secretary, said “this globe is more than just the United States” and that young people in the U.S. “might look at this a little bit differently” if they instead were living in Africa without even a single light bulb.

“America leads the world in the reduction of emissions today, and it’s because of our innovation, it’s because of people like these sitting on the stage, in the private sector, through government, through the universities, working together to find these solutions to the challenges of the climate,” Perry said.

The U.S. has a moral responsibility to be able to help deliver energy to parts of the world without it, he said. “If you really care about this world, in your youthful exuberance, I hope will take the time to think about how do we help the rest of the world clean up their environment?” he said.

Perry said the country should have a conversation about “are you really an environmentalist or is there some other basis to your opposition to fossil fuels being used, particularly when the clear science is that these fuels can be used with innovation, with technology, in a cleaner way?”

“We don’t sit on an island here in the United States. It’s a global environment that we live in. So I hope that those young people will think about ‘what is it that we really want to accomplish with our protests?’”

Speaking about the protesters, Thomas Farrell II, chair, president and CEO of Virginia-based Dominion Energy, said it was “very interesting to hear their voices.” But he also found irony in their use of smartphones to video-record their activities that no doubt would end up on social media.

“That iPhone was charged this morning, or overnight, with electricity that came, because there was no solar power overnight, that came either from natural gas or coal,” he said. “In our part of the country, it would have come from nuclear or coal or natural gas.”