We need a little more Andre the Giant to go with our Dread Pirate Roberts in Utah’s clean air, energy, water, and land effort.

I guess I learned everything I needed to know about energy policy from watching The Princess Bride.

As Andre the Giant loses consciousness at Roberts’ hands he gasps an excuse: “I’ve been specializing in large groups.”

The Dread Pirate Roberts, and more contemporaneously a similarly self styled solo conservationist with a super hero moniker, No Impact Man, take on the problems of pollution and oil addiction through severe and what sometimes amounts to mere aesthetic changes in lifestyle. After besting the giant in hand-to-hand combat, the Dread pirate Roberts realizes that to rescue his damsel in distress he also has to dismantle a formidable military state. It’s the classic “hero-must-storm-the-castle” scenario.

Successfully storming the castle, Roberts realizes, requires someone with large group skills: re-enter the giant.

I share Roberts’ myopia. My wife and I ride bikes to work everyday trying to make our dime of difference in the struggle to push back the smog that blankets the Salt Lake Valley. Almost fifty miles a day between the two of us, but a haze free view across that Greatest of Salty Lakes is still rare.

My lungs can tell too.

I’m realizing that I need an Andre the Giant on my side, a specialist in large groups. If we are going to leave this valley without the particulate bathtub ring composed of our incessant emissions, we are going to need everyone’s help. This task requires nothing less than a complete restructuring of the way our community works.

We need to create a community where policy makers, corporations, and individuals include the quality of world that is left to our children in their decision making process.

That’s why we need giants, people and groups who are willing and able to change corporations, congress and communities.

Greensburg Kansas is an example of a town where this kind of radical change has already occurred. In the wake of a tornado’s devastation, they decided to place their stewardship of the earth on the balance sheet with profit and loss. They elected leaders, promoted businesses, and made lifestyle changes. They rebuilt clean, green, and renewable. It wasn’t cheap and it wasn’t fast. They traded months in FEMA trailers and good money for an environmental legacy worth leaving.

Tonight, HEAL Utah welcomes the mayor of Greensburg Kansas, a giant of a man who will be presenting on how the town of Greensburg went clean while recovering from a devastating tornado.

Tonight we drive the environmental conversation toward transformation on a state level. We’ve been fighting hard to keep the state clean, free from the consequences of poor energy policy, this is part of our offensive. We’ve been mostly dead all day but it’s time we stormed the castle.

More information about what you don't want to miss tonight!