Submission Number: UBR-DEIS-00379 -- Oral Comment at Public Meeting 

Received: 12/1/2020 12:00:00 AM
Commenter: David Bennett
Organization: 
State: 

Agency: STB
Initiative: Uinta Basin Railway EIS
Attachments: No Attachments
Submission Text
Good afternoon.· Let me -- Jennifer, let me first congratulate you on the professionalism of moderating this afternoon and Dr. Wayland on the comprehensiveness and thoroughness
of addressing this issue perhaps with the exception of considering a No-Action plan, but the overall process is a good one.

We're here today to take a look at that process and to comment accordingly.· There have been a lot of comments regarding the impact of this railway, this proposed railway on life in the Uinta Basin.· I'm going to take this conversation to a new level to a 30,000-foot level literally.· We are ending this era of ignoring science, of science being politics, of science being something to be derived.· We are done with that era now.· We are moving into an era of -- moving this country and this planet forward as we go beyond 2020.

Climate change is very real.· It is upon us.· And we need to begin right now in stopping, slowing down, ending the use of fossil fuels.· So while we can talk about the need to mitigate the impact of this particular railway, what is really at stake here is a need to commit to moving on from the use of fossil fuels.

The science has told us, there's no question that continuing burning fossil fuels is going to doom the planet.· We can see that every day.· We can see that in weather changes, in wildfire activity in the west.

The approval of this project will continue this escalation of an assault on the climate that needs to stop.

To quote Lin-Manual Miranda and his Broadway show Hamilton, "History has its eyes on you." No longer can we deny science.· No longer can we deny the impact of climate change.· It starts right here. We need to deliver a message.· It needs to be a No-Action message as far as this project is concerned, that we are not going to tolerate a continued assault on the environment.

I urge you to vote No-Action and to shelf this project.· Thank you very much for your time.