Danny Westneat’s global-warming agnosticism
Editor, The Times:
Danny Westneat’s column “Climate change stirs much heat” [NWSunday, Dec. 13] was very discouraging.
He claims he is a global-warming agnostic, dismissing scientist’s concerns as political. He argues there is no way to know what is going on, given all the confusion. Yet when he interviews Dennis Lettenmaier, whom he describes as a moderate from the middle, Lettenmaier says global warming is happening, and that it’s untenable to pretend we can keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at the current rate and assume it’s not going to make a difference.
So where is the confusion? How soon will it all collapse? When will the rainfall pattern change enough that we have water rationing and power shortages in the Northwest? How many decades before ocean acidification causes such a biological collapse that our food supply is diminished?
These are details that may never have absolute answers, but do we really want to keep on with business as usual to find out?
The confusion is being heavily funded by a few corporations making billions off the status quo. Unfortunately, The Seattle Times is helping keep people confused. While the specific consequences may be in question, the cause of the problem is not. The longer we wait to make changes, the more drastic the changes will need to be.
The problem is not a political question, but a fact of physical reality.
The response is where politics and money come in to play. Do we really want to explain to our grandchildren that we destroyed their future because we were too shortsighted, lazy or cheap to make the necessary changes?
— Crispin B. Hollinshead, Port Townsend
Mohamed Axam Maumoon: a role model to all 15-year-olds
The Republic of the Maldives sent a 15-year-old boy as their ambassador to the climate summit in Copenhagen [“The people lead on climate change,” Opinion, Amy Goodman syndicated column, Dec. 11]. That island nation would be inundated with a sea-level rise of just a few feet if the climate continues to warm.
Though he is just 15, Mohamed Axam Maumoon understands the impact these changes will have on his home, and urged leaders to act now to head off climate disasters.
How many 15-year-olds in the U.S. have such a realistic grasp of the situation and are urging action now? Climate changes are subtle in most parts of the U.S., except in the Arctic where permafrost is melting and villages have been flooded.
Environmental science needs to be a required course in the high-school curriculum. Young citizens and future leaders must be aware of how natural systems work and how humans are disrupting those systems.
Some high-school courses may need to be combined or eliminated, but budget should not be an issue. Preservation of the Earth’s natural systems, and the future of mankind, should not be an elective issue, but a matter of survival.
— Sharon Sneddon, Edmonds
Krauthammer’s Copenhagen shakedown
In “Shakedown in Copenhagen” [Opinion, syndicated column, Dec. 12] Charles Krauthammer veils his true intent of defending the right of industrialists to pollute behind fictitious us-versus-them scenarios.
His first scenario is the crusade of the Third World to transfer the First World’s rightfully earned wealth into its corrupt coffers. The Third World has, in Krauthammer’s eyes, jettisoned the old phony egalitarian doctrine of socialism with the new soak-the-rich scheme of environmentalism.
Nice trick, equating the vanquished economic theory of socialism with a social movement whose aim is to preserve the livability of our planet. Not mentioned in Krauthammer’s piece is that the U.S., European Union, Russia and Japan account for 44 percent of global carbon emissions. Doesn’t this suggest some level of responsibility by the West to put its resources toward solving this global problem?
Krauthammer’s second scenario is the usurpation of the people’s power as represented by Congress to regulate carbon emissions by that wicked bastion of the leftist, the EPA. No way does Krauthammer give a fig for constitutional decency when it comes to the rights of the Democratically controlled Congress.
Rather, he knows this is the branch of our government most closely controlled by industrial interests and open to Republican chicanery.
— Timothy R. Nelson, Seattle