Are my posts about Global Climate Change becoming a downer? I fear maybe they could be. Who wants to see photos of our majestic glaciers vanishing?
It doesn’t have to be a downer. It’s only a downer because we know we aren’t addressing the problem like we should (and could!) be. We wouldn’t feel so sad if we were busy erecting solar power plants, photovoltaic panels on our roofs, and wind turbines to guarantee ourselves and future generations access to a bounty of sustainable energy.
Please consider writing a letter or email to one of our leaders this week. I’ve tried to make it easy for you, with resources and examples, on my Take Action page.
More renewable, carbon-free solar energy strikes the Earth in just one hour than the entirety of humanity consumes in a whole year. When we build more oil pipelines, worry over “energy independence,” envision putting coal miners “back to work” at a job that kills workers, and find ever more desperate and carbon-intensive ways to extract fossil fuels from the Earth’s crust, we are suffering from a lack of imagination. (Hopefully a temporary one.)
We are the people who saw birds fly, and at Kitty Hawk we learned to fly, too, and now we can be anywhere on Earth in a matter of hours. We are the people who saw Nazism rise, and we rose higher to defeat it. We are the people who saw Sputnik rise, and we were walking on the surface of the moon just a decade later. We are the people who eradicated polio and any number of other diseases. We recognized a dangerous problem of ozone depletion and worked effectively to correct it. We have put a supercomputer in everyone’s pocket and made practically all of human knowledge instantly available on it. The power of our government, our companies, and our people to effect change is astounding.
To act, we must first recognize a need. That’s what the side-by-sides of vanishing glaciers are about. Then, we get to work solving the problem. Plans have already been drafted. We need only the will to act. And to demand action from our leaders.
I have begun writing our leaders. Did you know that, in 2009, President Trump and three of his children signed an open letter to President Obama and the U.S. Congress asking for urgent action on Global Climate Change? It was in the New York Times. Here it is. Read it – I couldn’t have said it better myself! You’ll find Mr. Trump’s signature 2 rows from the bottom. I wrote to President Trump about that. In my district in Wisconsin, I am represented by two of the most vocal climate change deniers in the U.S. Congress. I wrote to them also. I am focusing my first batch of letters on a subject with which I have become informed: the overwhelming extent of scientific consensus that we have a real problem.
Please consider writing a letter or email to one of our leaders this week. On my Take Action page, I have posted resources to help you do that. I have also included copies of my own letters. Feel free to copy and paste if you agree with what I said. As I continue communicating with our leaders, I will keep posting my letters and any responses I receive.
But my letters won’t be enough. We need an avalanche of letters to wake up this frog! Please consider joining me this week. And please pass this call on to your friends.
Let’s RescueThatFrog together.