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As climate changes, activists struggle for Kansas’ attention

Environmentalists are struggling to get Kansas lawmakers to even discuss climate change as a serious issue

By JOHN HANNA, Associated Press
Published: February 20, 2020, 5:26pm
3 Photos
In this Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020 photo, Rabbi Moti Rieber, executive director of the Kansas Interfaith Alliance, testifies against a bill to bar cities and counties from banning single-use plastic bags and straws, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Rieber says he&#039;s frustrated that lawmakers are considering such a measure and not having a meaningful conversation about climate change.
In this Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020 photo, Rabbi Moti Rieber, executive director of the Kansas Interfaith Alliance, testifies against a bill to bar cities and counties from banning single-use plastic bags and straws, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Rieber says he's frustrated that lawmakers are considering such a measure and not having a meaningful conversation about climate change. (AP Photo/John Hanna) Photo Gallery

TOPEKA, Kan. — Environmentalists are struggling to get lawmakers to even discuss climate change as a serious issue in Kansas, where some leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature question the widespread scientific consensus that human activity is dangerously warming the planet.

States such as Virginia, Minnesota and California are pursuing goals for eventually getting all of their electricity from renewable resources. But Kansas proposals aimed at reducing electricity use, making state office space more energy efficient and encouraging farmers to capture and store greenhouse gases have languished without committee hearings.

Environmentalists had to schedule their own climate change hearing earlier this month outside of lawmakers’ regular meetings. Even more galling for them, a House committee’s first foray Thursday into environmental policy was a hearing on a business-backed measure to bar cities and counties from banning single-use plastic bags or straws.

Some Republicans worry about the costs of pursuing initiatives for consumers, farmers and businesses, questioning whether Kansas could effectively lessen the problem. But some of them doubt it’s a problem compelling enough to address and express opinions at odds with most scientists’ views.

“The planet goes in cycles, and it’s a natural cycle,” said House Majority Leader Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican. “They think that the globe is warming. And guess what? If you go back through history, it did, and then it cools down, and then it warms and then it cools down.”

Rabbi Moti Rieber, executive director of the Kansas Interfaith Alliance, said lawmakers have avoided tackling climate change in recent years “as the situation continues to get worse.” Of the 71 billion-dollar natural disasters the federal government says have affected Kansas over the past 40 years, more than half, or 37, occurred in the past decade, even with damage figures adjusted for inflation.

“It’s frustrating beyond belief,” Rieber said during the hearing on the bill dealing with plastic bags. “We’re fiddling while the world burns.”

Oil and natural gas production remain an important industry in Kansas, but it’s also made big strides on clean energy because of a wind-farm boom over the past decade.

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