City Newspaper Archives - 1/2008

ENVIRONMENT: Save the planet? It's up to us

Published on Jan 04, 2008
Kudos to you - and other alternative papers - for printing the articles on global warming ("You're Getting Warmer" and "States Are Going It Alone," December 5). There is no more pressing issue today for, as I tell my daughter when she says I care "too much" about the environment, we only have one planet and our time is running out.

Both Bill McKibben and Jeremy Moule did a good job outlining the causes and consequences of global warming, with Moule addressing specifically what New York has done and needs to do. Unfortunately, the US has consistently dragged its heels on taking any substantive action to halt the emission of greenhouse gases.

For example, we never have signed the Kyoto treaty, and our response to the negotiations in Bali doesn't look promising. This is, of course, because taking action might cut into the bottom line of many of the richest corporations that now in effect run our country.

Folks, as McKibben writes, what we do or don't do now is a kind of final exam, and there's nothing fuzzy or vague about it. If we miss this chance to take real action, the climate likely spirals out of control.

If you're not scared, you're not paying attention. We can take all the individual actions we want, and we should, but real change must come from the state and especially federal government. And so we must immediately, even the shyest, least politically active among us, call on our leaders to do the right thing. Or we'll all go down together.

LEIGH M. O'BRIEN, GENESEO