(Last week, we asked readers this question: “What single, achievable action do you believe would make the biggest difference in the fight against climate change?” Here are the responses we received.)
Here is my answer, and it is not original. You can just follow the money and the answer to the question the Monitor has posed becomes clear. Bill McKibben wrote at length about this very same question in a recent New Yorker magazine article. What we need to do is to stop funding the fossil fuel industry. Lenders, insurers and investors need to stop funding and investing in the fossil fuel industry. People are mad. Some people are afraid. It’s time to do something really meaningful that will accomplish a rollback to the speed with which our planet is being degraded by greed.
CLAUDIA DAMON
Concord
What single, achievable action do I believe would make the biggest difference in the fight against climate change? A carbon tax, applied to everything, no exceptions. It’s the only universal and effective way to reduce carbon loading of the atmosphere.
PAUL HAGUE
Weare
David Brooks, a.k.a. Granite Geek, I don’t want to say you burst my bubble (“Solving the ‘act globally’ equation,” Monitor front page, Sept. 17), but frankly, you burst my bubble!
My individual efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle are not just a drop in the bucket of our efforts to avert climate change, they are a mere drop in the ocean of the efforts needed! Here we are in a small city (certainly by global standards) in a small state, but we are sitting right next to a coal-burning power plant that contributes in one hour more CO2 than I do in a quarter century, even before I start zealously reducing my own energy footprint!
Clearly, the solution is much higher up the chain of command. When we have a governor vetoing every single effort to reduce CO2 emissions, from nixing efforts to encourage our fledgling solar industry to vetoing the net metering cap, it’s inescapable that we need to act politically. When we have a president who is so beholden to the fossil fuel industry that his idea of progress is to loosen every restriction on auto emissions states like California have struggled heroically to achieve, and to tear down every protection of our air, water and land previous administrations have put in place (which admittedly were only a bucketful in the ocean to begin with), we need to act politically.
So I believe that acting politically to elect leaders who recognize the threat of the climate crisis at least as well as our young people do is the single, most basic step we must take. But I think that is only the first step. In terms of actually slowing climate change we need to cut emissions in our transportation system, our biggest source of CO2. That means not only improving efficiency, but switching to clean energy. Our sun sends us clean power daily. In contrast to the dismal performance of our local power plant, our sun sends in a single hour all the energy the world and all its inhabitants use in a full year. Harnessing solar energy is happening now, but only with political and individual effort will it become more efficient, more affordable and more universal. Solar power needs to light our pathway forward. I’m going to continue to do my part to make that happen, and I encourage you to do yours.
MILLIE LaFONTAINE
Concord
I was really happy to see David Brooks’s column about our global crisis. His use of simple (not really) math to show that individual, well-meaning, conservation activities won’t get the job done proves that it will take agreement and cooperation by all the world’s countries to slow down global warming. You’ll notice I didn’t say stop the warming. Mother Nature has her own agenda and right now it is a warming trend. Nothing we can do about that, just accept it and plan for it.
Now to the question: You asked for a “single, achievable action” in the fight against climate change. The word achievable is the daunting challenge. Some will say my thought means surrendering to the inevitable, and I would say it means simply retreating, but here goes.
We need immediate state and nationwide legislation that prevents anyone from rebuilding, on the same footprint, all homes and businesses, sewage treatment plants, parks, etc., that are destroyed by hurricanes and/or rising sea levels attributed to global warming. Take the insurance money and, perhaps, some modest government assistance and rebuild on higher ground. Drastic? I don’t think so.
For example, when New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, why were people allowed to rebuild in an area where much of the city was originally built below sea level and protected (?) by levees. This idea won’t fly well with those along our shores who want their piece of heaven protected by walls or other barriers (built by others, of course).
The town of Hampton recently took a baby step in the right direction by adopting a regulation that new buildings in certain areas must be built on stilts, in recognition of rising sea levels and future storms.
Sadly, it will be a long time before China and India, two of the world’s worst polluters, join the team to seriously address this global issue so we might as well act locally while others talk globally.
GIL ROGERS
Bow
The single best action we can take to combat climate change would be to pass a carbon tax, or a cap and trade system. The idea is to start with a fairly high carbon fee and have it steadily increase over time. Stop having endless battles over which coal power plants should close, or what the automobile mileage standards should be, or what types of light bulbs we should use. Let the market know what carbon will cost and then let market forces figure out the details. It is a concept that has support from conservative economists as well as from former Republican treasury secretaries, Federal Reserve chairs, and presidential economic advisers, as well as from multiple Fortune 500 companies. This should be achievable.
Two things stand in the way. The first is Republican control of the U.S. Senate. We in New Hampshire are not in a position to do anything about that because we already have two Democratic senators. All we can do is support Sen. Jean Shaheen next year and hope enough other states replace their Republicans with Democrats.
The other obstacle is President Donald Trump. Just about all of the Democratic candidates support taking action to combat climate change, with many of them supporting either a carbon fee or a cap and trade system. Our special position as New Hampshire primary voters gives us the opportunity and the obligation to try to figure out which candidates will go to the mat for this, and which candidates are saying the words but won’t follow through when the going gets tough. And I think the going will get tough on this. It is going to take political courage and leadership to get this done.
When Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he told an aide “We have lost the South for a generation.” He knew it was politically dangerous but he pushed it through anyway because it was the only morally defensible thing to do. We need someone with that kind of courage in the climate change fight.
STEPHEN RASCHE
Canterbury
If you’re serious about protecting the environment, the most important thing that you can do is to stop eating meat, eggs and dairy.
Feeding massive amounts of grain (that humans could eat) and water (that humans could drink) to farmed animals and then killing them and processing, transporting and storing the products is extremely energy-intensive. And forests – which absorb greenhouse gases – are cut down and often set on fire to supply pastureland and grow crops for farmed animals. Finally, the animals themselves and all the manure that they produce release even more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere.
There have been countless studies proving that going vegan or “plant-based” is the single best way to reverse climate change. The U.N. believes that a global shift toward plant-based food is vital to combat the worst effects of climate change. Globally, animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gases than all the world’s transportation systems combined. Combined!
An Oxford University study, published in the journal Climatic Change, shows that meat-eaters are responsible for almost twice as many dietary greenhouse-gas emissions per day as vegetarians and about 2½ times as many as vegans.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t take other steps to help the environment, such as reducing our use of plastics and fossil fuel, but the easiest way to make a difference is with our fork. You can start at your next meal, your next night out, your next grocery shopping trip. If you care about the health of the planet, you can make a difference by what you put on your plate.
LAURA SCOTT
Concord
The big question: “What single, achievable action do you believe would make the biggest difference in the fight against climate change.” The big answer: Vote.
If we do not get the naysayers out of office, we have no hope. It is the one individual thing we can each do that will have a positive, global impact.
The Republican Party, unfortunately, has chosen to be the party of the past, clinging to fossil fuels. President Trump is no surprise. As a candidate he denied the science; as president he has shown repeatedly, by his reversal of environmental protections, that he cares nothing about the planet. Gov. Sununu, a self-proclaimed environmental scientist, was a surprise – to me anyway. When he first became governor of New Hampshire, I had really hoped that he would work to address the carbon problem. Instead, he is following Donald Trump’s marching orders. Leaders do not walk around with blinders on. The world needs the equivalent of another Manhattan Project. Will the United States, finally, take the lead to address a global threat? This can only happen if we vote people into office who take this seriously. This is not “diddly-squat.”
We need to look at the records of all local, state and federal candidates running for office. Get the facts; then vote. It is the single most important thing we can do to address this, the biggest question.
How many canaries have to die before we wake up?
JEANNE CUSSON
Concord