CARBONDALE — The governor’s energy czarina knew her audience. Speaking in front of Roaring Fork Valley high school students, Heidi VanGenderen, Gov. Bill Ritter’s senior advisor on climate change and energy policy, said youths aren’t only the future when it comes to energy issues — they’re the present, too.
“Each of us has in our own lives the ability to make a difference,” VanGenderen said. Sometimes, she said, it’s a matter of “how much you’re bugging your folks at home. … You are the agitators that bring about change.”
Van Genderen was speaking in front of students taking part in Tomorrow’s Voices, a nonprofit civics organization that encourages dialog between students at Roaring Fork Valley schools and adults.
She had an easy audience. When she asked how many of the students believe the world is in the midst of climate change, almost all of them stood up. About the same number said fossil fuel use is to blame.
“It’s great that you’re as aware as you are,” she said.
VanGenderen spelled out Ritter’s energy policy, and his push for what he has termed a “new energy economy” intended to steer away from traditional fossil fuels in favor of renewable and alternative fuels.
She plugged Ritter’s success in passing some 20 energy bills in last year’s legislature and more up in this year’s session, encouraging alternative energy firms to set up in Colorado and his efforts to reduce the state’s greenhouse emissions.
But she also encouraged the students to write to the governor and push him to go further. Noting a British law that bans emissions altogether from natural gas wells, she asked, “Why are we not doing that?”
She advised them to write to legislators, too. “Where’s the outrage over the fact that we’re fighting wars over oil?” she asked.
Despite the gloom and doom that tends to surround questions of global warming and energy consumption, most students said they are hopeful. “If you look, people are starting to wake up,” said Quinardo Soto, 18, a senior at Glenwood High.
Soto noted a recent Time magazine list of 100 individuals and companies making a difference, from Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man, promoting environmental classes in schools, to Pepsi’s making its processes more efficient.
“I was really excited to see the huge variety of international people from all over the world that were actively involved in this,” he said.
Not all were so optimistic, though.
“We are running on a time clock here, and we seem to be becoming more apathetic as a majority,” said Roaring Fork High School junior Alex Heinig, 17.
VanGenderen urged students not to think about climate change solely as a cause, but as a career, as more and more jobs become focused on energy alternatives.
“There’s a whole industry awaiting you guys,” she said.
dfrey@aspendailynews.com
