Utah
‘Our nation is starving for kindness’: Cox urges collaboration, unity at One Utah Summit
Gov. Spencer Cox speaks throughout his month-to-month information convention at PBS Utah on the Eccles Broadcast Middle in Salt Lake Metropolis on April 21. Cox, throughout a keynote speech on the One Utah Spring Summit Tuesday, mentioned good and dangerous issues happening in Utah, and why growing authorities rules is not the easiest way ahead for the state. (Laura Seitz, Deseret Information)
Estimated learn time: 3-4 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Gov. Spencer Cox mentioned the mishmash of audio system, concepts and themes current on the 2022 One Utah Spring Summit Tuesday was a mirrored image of how his mind works.
“I imagine that concepts really make and create new concepts and that it is actually vital to get new folks and totally different views in a room collectively, having conversations and listening,” Cox mentioned.
He additionally mentioned he believes that essentially the most urgent issues going through at the moment’s society cannot — and will not — be solved by more and more stringent governmental rules.
As an alternative, the governor pointed to innovation and the cross-pollination of concepts as the easiest way ahead.
“That is what we wished to do at the moment,” Cox mentioned. “I wished you to listen to about vitality and I wished you to listen to about enterprise. I wished you to listen to about The Level and what’s occurring about The Level, and I wished you to listen to in regards to the Olympic motion and what we’re making an attempt to do right here. I wished you to listen to about refugees and the issues which can be occurring right here as a result of these are the issues that matter to Utah.”
Cox talked about an expertise he had over the weekend whereas {golfing} along with his brother-in-law, the place the 2 have been paired up with one other group of two to type a foursome. By way of dialogue over 18 holes, the 2 people informed Cox about how they’d each moved to Utah from totally different components of the nation and that they completely like it.
They mentioned the preconceived notions they held, and issues they’d heard, could not be farther from the reality.
This perfect is that we work collectively, we collaborate, that we do not let our variations divide us, and that we discover higher methods to do issues.
–Utah Gov. Spencer Cox
This interplay led Cox to mirror on among the statistics that he is pleased with, in addition to ones he is hoping to enhance upon.
“For the previous 50 years, from the primary time they began measuring this, the variety of innovation jobs per capita created in a calendar yr, one state has been the No. 1 state yearly for 50 years, and that state is California,” Cox mentioned. “Till this previous yr when Utah grew to become the state with essentially the most innovation jobs per capita.”
He emphasised that milestones like which can be how “we clear up the world’s issues.”
Whereas he acknowledged optimistic statistics like that, he additionally identified that he is not oblivious in assuming that there are not any issues within the state. Issues, he mentioned, must be fastened and labored on collaboratively.
“We do not simply wish to discuss in regards to the good issues,” Cox mentioned. “We wish to discuss in regards to the onerous issues, the tough issues, the troubling issues that we have to enhance.”
The precise downside Cox spoke about Tuesday was a WalletHub report from August that discovered the Beehive State ranked lifeless final when assessed on metrics measuring girls’s equality.
“We introduced in one of many foremost leaders in girls’s points right here within the state, Dr. Susan Madsen, and we walked via each single a type of metrics in our survey to speak about how we may enhance and do higher,” Cox mentioned.
He additionally talked about how Utah is usually a sufferer of its personal success within the sense that individuals are shifting to the state at unprecedented ranges, that means increased inflation charges and a skyrocketing housing market.
“That development is actual, and it is coming,” Cox mentioned.
Regardless of the negatives that include inhabitants development, Cox continued to induce persistence, acceptance and the “Utah manner.”
“This perfect is that we work collectively, we collaborate, that we do not let our variations divide us, and that we discover higher methods to do issues,” Cox mentioned. “That the way in which we do one thing is sort of as vital because the factor itself.”
Cox additionally touched on how divided the nation is, referencing surveys that say that because the Civil Warfare, that is essentially the most divided the nation has been.
“Our nation, our world, is ravenous for group,” Cox mentioned. “Our nation is ravenous for neighborhoods and neighbors. Our nation is ravenous for kindness.”