Earth Protect Blog

The Open Forum

 

Letters to the Editor

Jim Miller, Arvada

Prop 112 effort sends clear message to legislators

Re: “Drilling setbacks fall short,” Nov. 7 news story

Wake up politicians! Your constituents care about the environment.

We are horrified by what the world’s leading scientists and economists are telling us loud and clear.

Climate change is real, it’s now, it’s us, it’s bad . . . real bad.

Let’s write even better climate legislation that will pass next election and give our planet a chance.

Leave ancient hydrocarbons in the ground.

Zero degrees warming is our only hope. Let’s let the market decide — pass carbon pricing!

Lesley LeFevre, Centennial

Embrace good news on ozone, let it be a motivation

Re: “U.N. says Earth’s ozone layer is healing,” Nov. 6 news story

What does it take to solve a global problem? Scientific data, public recognition of the problem, an international agreement, monitoring of the environment, and patience. From the recognition of the ozone problem in the 1970s to a predicted recovery in 2060 lies a span of almost a century. Phasing out the release of man-made gases required the negotiation of the Montreal Protocol in 1987 and watchfulness since that time.

And so it is with the excessive release of another gas, carbon dioxide. The data are there, the scientific community has issued warnings for 30 years, and environmental warnings come in weekly in the form of extreme weather events.

An international agreement was reached then breached by the United States. Energy replacements now exist for hydrocarbon fuels but the transition to solar and wind energy must be encouraged by public policy. We need realistic prices for hydrocarbons, prices that reflect the damage caused by their release. The pricing mechanism was revealed 15 years ago by one of this year’s recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, William Nordhaus. We know the problem only too well. The time is here to implement a carbon pricing protocol.

Phil Nelson, Golden

• • •

Hopefully the United Nations report that the ozone is healing, due to the worldwide phasing out of ozone-depleting chemicals, will jolt willful climate change deniers in the Republican party into get on board with policies that can blunt if not reverse climate change. If an entire planet can summon the will to reverse a global calamity like ozone depletion, then surely America alone can summon the will to transform itself into a nation that runs mostly on renewable and sustainable energy sources rather than fossil fuels. It has to start with Republicans abandoning their fealty to the energy industry and accepting the science of climate change and the human cause of it.

Steve Coppola, Denver