Energy & Climate
I am passionate about the subject of energy, perhaps due to a much more intimate relation to the consequences of the industry than most candidates you will hear from. I was born, raised, and reside in Carbon County, named for the remarkable mineral that streaks our peaks and forms the bedrock of our incredible mountains and book cliffs. In fact, I am a seventh generation native of my beautiful valley with many of my grandparents and relatives having spent all or much of their working lives within the coal mines or at the power plants. I often think about my Grandpa Ross Norton, a World War II veteran who returned home following Iwo Jima and began a long career in the energy industry as a proud lifelong Union man.
If you ever find yourself in Carbon or Emery Counties, I encourage you to take a walk through one of our cemeteries. As you do you will begin to notice something unique. On many of the headstones you will see four capitalized letters, UMWA. Imagine the love a person must have for something to put it on the own headstone, we put our names, the names of those we loved, the years we were alive, and in this case – our beloved Union. The Union built and sustained these rural communities and were the unifying glue that bound them together. However, beginning in 1980 with the Regan Administration, the unions were gutted and in the subsequent decades Union membership has dropped by more than 50%. The consequences are easily seen as every community that was bound together in the common cause of workers’ rights has been decimated. Growing up with family in the UMWA, I saw the importance of organized labor and what it meant to be part of a community. Today, there are zero active coal mines in Carbon County and the flawed popular opinion is that environmental policies are exclusively to blame. The reality is that while regulations certainly played a role, another huge contributor was the unchecked free market and corporations that could care less about the local economy because they would have no consequences since our Union had been targeted by the greedy business owners and their paid-for politicians.
As a Democrat I intend to represent the needs of the people of my community and that includes confronting some hard truths. My party saw the reality of climate change and other environmental issues and took action, however, they did so irresponsibly and without critical thought about the devastation that would be wrought on so many small communities. When I took hunters safety as a kid one of the first lessons was that when you aim at a target, it is important to make sure that there is nobody standing behind it. My party shot the target, but in the process did not see that my community was standing behind it.
I strongly believe that we need to address climate change, but we must do so responsibly and realistically. If we are going to pass regulations that may cause an industry to decline, we must first put into place safeguards that ensure that the people, the actual real-life people affected, are protected. One power plant job equates to seven other support and collateral ones, which means that the closure of even one power plant is a death sentence to an entire community, it’s history, roots, and residents. There is absolutely no reason why we cannot come to a solution that protects our climate while ensuring the workers who built and build this country continue to have good paying and secure careers. We need an elected leader who has to courage to stand up to his own party and remind all of Congress that our very purpose is to advocate for our people.
I’m running to be that leader and today I am asking for your support in this endeavor. I will continue to fight for the security of our workers and brashly confront those who continue to allow the unchecked greed of the corporations to go unpunished. I will fight to unite our communities into a Union of citizens and stand arm-in-arm with you as we build a better tomorrow for our children.
Your endorsement and contributions are an invaluable privilege that I do not ask for lightly or without a promise in return. That promise is simple, that when elected, I will advocate tirelessly for the needs and dreams of your members and their families. I can do this because I am the product of generations of hard working miners and Union members, it is in my DNA to seek out a good brawl and it’s time Congress had someone willing to punch back.
