The local papers here in southern Oregon will accept a letter to the editor 1x/month. So each month I labor away in rewrite after rewrite, until I can't stand it anymore and just fire them off with a quick touch of the Send button...as is. But the topic is always the same: global warming/climate change and the urgency of now. This month I viewed Climate Change as a moral issue, which I believe it is. It was written with the feeble hope that labeling legislative deniers etc as immoral could effect a change where facts evidently do not.
And then just after I had sent the letters on their merry way... Truthout arrived in my Inbox with an interview with scientist, Guy McPherson, that echoed the projections of a class I had just taken on climate change. And it wasn't good news. What follows is a link to that Truthout interview and a copy of my letter.
Doing nothing about this cascading crisis, even in the face of endless feedback loops already set in motion, is not yet in my vocabulary.
The Truthout article was entitled Are Humans Going Extinct? The answer in short was yes, and in our lifetime. McPherson mused:
So it's difficult for me to imagine a scenario where we'll survive even a 4-degree Celsius [above pre-industrial baseline] temperature rise, and we'll be there in the very near future, like by 2030, plus or minus. So it's hard for me to imagine we make it into the 2030s as a species.
My letter which would have stressed the immediacy more if I had read the Truthout interview first...follows:
Is it moral to kill future generations to secure our lifestyle for a few more years?
That is the big question behind the ever increasing climate changes caused by greenhouse gases. For if we refuse to stop the Fossil Fuel Industry from its wanton need to pollute for profit we are all culpable in the destruction that follows.
To make the needed changes the powerful Fossil Fuel Industry must be stopped in its tracks. Individuals alone cannot do that; it requires national and global leaders.
But… as individuals we can refuse to vote for those immoral legislators who are acolytes to the fossil fuel industry. These are the legislators who vote to dis-empower the EPA and to give our tax dollars to the fossil fuel industry in exchange for hefty campaign contributions. Sadly, our own Greg Waldon fits this immoral profile.
We know that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuels are driving the climate change that is cascading before our eyes. We know we don’t have much time left to abandon fossil fuels and the harvest of death they bring to our future. Our votes and voices matter as never before.
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The continued extraction and promotion of fossil fuels can only be viewed as consummate acts of immorality given that the certain outcome is mass murder of all life. Those who abet and support the fossil fuel industry are the epitome of Evil writ large.