Legislature needs to take up subject of climate change

You might think this adage just applies to children or teenagers.
You know, when they suddenly become too quiet, you better pay attention.
As a rule, that’s good advice in the world of politics, too, especially in the Legislature.
Yes, it’s an election year and no one wants to make too much noise over legislation that might be on the bubble.
Think of last year’s education reform bill or 2017’s Roads to Prosperity initiative. They were noisy. But it wasn’t an election year.
Today marks the halfway point in this year’s regular legislative session and we’re unsure of what our lawmakers are up to. We do know that 1,980 bills have been introduced, of which eight qualify as completed legislation, aside from needing the governor’s signature on most of them.
But when normally long-winded and loud politicians are not talking about one thing or another, you better pay attention. And the one thing no one seems to be talking about in this election year is our state’s climate.
More to the point, what happened to winter? If our memory serves us well, it has been four years since the last major snowstorm.
Sure, during that span it has snowed and sleeted and got blue cold, any number of times, but it has consistently come and gone too fast to sink in.
There is one bipartisan bill — HB 4562 — in the Legislature that’s been called a compromised alternative solar energy bill. Its purpose is to create a program to further the development of renewable energy resources for economic development.
It allows electric utilities (there are two in the state) to build or buy and then own and operate a solar plant.
Though this bill comes at the behest of the state’s Department of Commerce, is endorsed by House and Senate leaders and committee chairs, it appears stalled.
Altogether are there around 40 bills related to the environment and energy. Some under environment tackle plastic bags, polystyrene containers, air quality permits and so on.
While many energy bills target oil and natural gas well permitting, three of these bills seek to develop renewables on a small scale.
It’s probably safe to say those three bills concerning renewables is progress in itself but we don’t need a climatologist to tell us our weather is unnatural.
It took all of us to get to this point, and by that we mean we will all be on the receiving end of climate change if we continue to ignore it.
Clearly, no one controls the weather, but it’s apparent it’s going to take all of us to do anything about it.
And we get the impression few legislators even want to do that. Or even talk about it.