The New Polluters: Joggers

By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI

Melvin Neufeld says joggers, as much as cars, are responsible for pollution.

It’s about to get a lot harder for Western Kansas politicians to ignore the threats of global warming. After nearly a year of pussyfooting around controversial issues, the Kansas Energy Council, which advises the governor and legislature on energy issues, voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to make global warming one of its top priorities in 2008.

Lord knows, some Kansas policy makers need an education.

Global warming became a hot topic this summer after Rod Bremby, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, denied the Sunflower Electric Power Corporation a permit to expand its coal-fired power plant in Western Kansas. Explaining his rejection, Bremby cited concerns about the plant’s carbon dioxide emissions and contribution to global warming.

That infuriated leaders include House Speaker Melvin Neufeld and Senate President Stephen Morris, who were banking on the $3.6 billion investment in their part of the state. Since Bremby’s October decision, Sunflower has appealed the denial while disappointed politicians have taken every opportunity to downplay the dangers of climate change.

Neufeld told The Pitch this summer that he wasn’t concerned about global warming. “We grow a lot of corn out here, and corn uses up all the CO2 it can get,” he said. Earlier this week, Neufeld again voiced his ambivalence about climate change when he told the Salina Journal, “They tell us that if you jog two miles you emit more carbon dioxide than if you drive two miles.”

Morris has been full of hot air as well, telling The Pitch in July that emissions from Sunflower’s proposed expansion didn’t worry him. “Any pollution will be minimal at most,” he said. Morris also spoke to the Salina Journal this week. “I haven’t received personally enough information to make up my own mind on whether it truly is something to worry about,” Morris said of global warming.

Now the Kansas Energy Council will spend next year gathering information for skeptical policy makers like Neufeld and Morris.

Governor Kathleen Sebelius created the KEC in 2004 and appointed 35 legislators, agency heads and citizens to sit on the advisory panel. Over the past year, Sebelius took hits from the environmental community for not making a stronger stance against the Sunflower expansion. The KEC faced similar criticism.

That changed when Sebelius came out against the coal-fired power complex shortly before Bremby’s decision and signed on to a Midwestern Regional Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord last month. The agreement among nine Midwest Governors will set a target and a timeline to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Conspicuously absent from the accord: Missouri Governor Matt Blunt.

KEC appointee Sarah Dean, a diminutive woman who filed suit against the state of Kansas to regulate carbon dioxide earlier this year, has been fighting to put greenhouse gas emissions on the group’s agenda for months.

At the Wednesday meeting in Topeka, Ken Frahm, the group’s co-chair, told the council that he wasn’t deaf to the complaints that the council had been avoiding tough issues.

“There’s been a lot of heat on the issue, but very little light,” he told the council. “I think we can illuminate it a little bit.”

Lieutenant Governor Mark Parkinson chimed in that Sebelius would back the KEC’s efforts. “I want folks to know that, whether you vote for this or not, the governor won’t take offense that a decision she’s already made is being analysed by the council.”

With that, an overwhelming majority of members voted to investigate the state’s greenhouse gas emissions and hand over their results to state policymakers by the end of next year.

We’re no experts, but we’re pretty sure outlawing jogging and growing a lot of corn won’t be among the KEC’s recommendations. Sorry, Melvin.