Climate change

Rick Sobey’s piece on 2023’s weather calls it a “very active” year. You can say that again! Worldwide, 2023 will likely be the hottest year since people began measuring Earth’s temperature. Here, it was just plain wet. Farmers in western Mass. had to start GoFundMes to survive after torrential rains flooded their fields.

As a science teacher, nearly every day I’ll receive a question from one of my students about the climate. “Isn’t it weird that there hasn’t been any snow yet?” was the most recent one.

Even at their young age, kids can see what is going on. The weather is getting weirder, and it will continue to do so if our noticing doesn’t turn into action.  It’s been known since the 1880s that when we burn stuff, the carbon dioxide produced traps heat. Special interests such as the American Petroleum Institute spread the lie that scientists disagreed about the basic cause-and-effect that makes the climate change we see now different from the ones Earth has gone through in the past. But 99.9% of the scientific studies agree: human actions are changing the climate.

It’s time to rescue ourselves, and our kids’ futures, from the special interests who make money selling the fossil fuels that are ruining our future.

Mary Jane Else

South Hadley

Legislation needed

The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is projected to reach 1000 ppm by the end of the century, which is not supportive to life on Earth as we know it. The last time the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was that high, sea levels were 70-90 meters higher than they are today, and there was very little ice on the poles.

This is not a future we want to head toward, so it is really important to take action on climate change with effective legislation. Carbon Fee and Dividend is widely-agreed upon by Economists to be the single most effective climate policy the U.S. could enact, as it would put the country on a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and incentivize other countries to enact similar carbon prices through trade. Please ask your Congressional Representatives to support the Carbon Fee and Dividend bill at cclusa.org/write-cfd.

Katharine Gage

Windham, NH