– Letter to the Editor –

– Letter to the Editor –

Letter to the Editor:

It is time to embrace the reality of climate change, and say yes to wind and solar power. We must decrease our human carbon footprint and hold carbon gas emissions to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes the “scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal” (National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s website at https://climate.nasa.gov/ evidence/).

It is time to act now, given the impact we see in our own backyards, of farmers struggling with their crops, to the ravaging fires on the west coast, the torrential rains, heavy snowfalls and devastating effects from flooding.

It is our own human activity and dependency upon fossil fuels that has led to the acceleration of climate change from global warming (https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/). We have to move away from coal and other petroleumbased fossil fuel companies, who have withheld the truth and reality of the science, and data about carbon dioxide saturating the air at levels warming our climate at alarming rates.

We have to say yes to wind and solar energy sources, as human health costs are increasing with allergies, asthma, tick-borne diseases, injuries from weather events, and mental health and anxiety, or depressive effects from repeated climate change trauma. The human health costs add on to the significant damage and devastation costs occurring from climate change, and are beyond the capacity of family and community’s budgets for recovery.

I embrace science and data, indicative we MUST move quickly to implement wind and solar energy sources to decrease the impact of our human carbon footprint. Join me in action, and support wind and solar power as energy sources!

Our health, and the health of our kids and grandkids, depend upon us to listen to the science and act!

Dr. Pamela L. Guthman, DNP, RN-BC, Holcombe