Climate change: No time to waste

Alwyn Moss has written an excellent commentary (“Climate change: our challenge,” Aug. 6) supporting President Obama’s climate speech and plan, and posing serious questions that still need to be answered about the economy.

There is no credible scientific data to deny that the greatest problem facing the country and the global community today is climate change.

Indeed, our challenges with climate change are many; however, we can and should support President Obama. I agree with Moss that “Obama’s proposals for a new energy policy are a significant move in the right direction.” I also believe even more strongly that it is not enough.

Four former Republican Environmental Protection Agency directors (William D. Ruckelshaus, Lee M. Thomas, William K. Reilly and Christine Todd Whitman) wrote in an Aug. 1 New York Times commentary, “A Republican case for climate action,” that “a market-based approach, like a carbon tax, would be the best path to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, but that is unachievable in the current political gridlock in Washington.”

These four former EPA directors, who are environmental, business and political experts, declare that despite having served Republican presidents, “we have a message that transcends political affiliation: The United States must move now on substantive steps to curb climate change, at home and internationally.” Furthermore, they say that “the window of time remaining to act is growing smaller: Delay could mean that warming becomes ‘locked in.’ ”

Ruckelshaus, Thomas, Reilly and Todd Whitman demand that “rather than argue against his [Obama’s] proposals, our leaders in Congress should endorse them and start the overdue debate about what bigger steps are needed and how to achieve them — domestically and internationally.”

I wholeheartedly agree. We must and should urge all of our elected representatives to act now. Citizens must speak out and take every voluntary action possible to curb climate change. Our elected officials must commit to regulatory change in order for the global community to thrive and survive on our only home and planet.

To the few climate deniers, including my Republican elected representatives in the commonwealth and U.S. House of Representatives, get on the bandwagon or get out of the way. Stop wasting your time and energy, and my tax dollars, denying the existence of climate change, and instead do something about it.

We have squandered too many decades with inaction. There is no time remaining to waste. Act today.

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