November 8th,
2013
Members of the EPA panel,
During a recent summer vacation I took a trip with
my youngest son William, intending to see some of this beautiful country as we
made our way toward Madison, Wisconsin. We loaded our car with binoculars,
backpacks and peanut-butter and jelly, and left the Oregon coast intending to
camp our way back. But the forest fires in Oregon and Northern Idaho blackened
the sky overhead. After watching the fire-fighting helicopters swoop down to lower
their hoses and suck water from the Clearwater River we’d planned to camp
along, we had no choice but to push on, crossing into Montana where I told my
son his asthma would get better in “big sky” country. But the smoke and flying
ash followed us across the border, and the sun hung alien and red, barely
penetrating the haze.
Tuning in to local talk-radio produced one story
after another about how many of Montana and Wyoming’s cows had perished in the longstanding
drought, and that shipping cattle out of state was the only hope left for
ranchers who’d run out of options. It got so depressing my son switched the
radio off and we drove on in silence. It
was late August and by North Dakota we were feeling trapped in our car. The
temperatures outside were over 100 degrees, and soon our thoughts were focused
on simply making it back home to Madison. I’ve made that trip twenty times or
more since I was a child, and I’d never seen anything like that. It felt like a
nightmare; a post-apocalyptic journey. I couldn’t help but wonder; is this my
son’s future?
I want to say to President Obama that hope and
change don’t come from fossil fuels, dangerous greenhouse gasses do. Fires,
droughts, tornadoes, floods, and hurricanes are all made worse by those warming
gasses. Real hope and change, Mr.
President, come from communities working together to create a renewable and
sustainable energy future for all of our children.
I have two sons. They are my hope for the future; America’s future. Someday I’d like them to
be able to tell their children about the time our nation finally took a serious
stand for the future of humanity, cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline and
reigning in the CO2 belching from antiquated power-plants , and that from those
first steps, our nation began a journey toward real sustainability.
Man-made climate-change isn’t simply the greatest
challenge of our generation, it is the greatest challenge humanity has ever
faced. Humankind will either respond to this challenge or perish.
I want my
great-great-grandchildren to be able to see slender leaves unfurl from the tips
of their branches in early Spring, because Spring has come at the proper time
and stayed its season. I want them to stand under the dripping elms after a
rain and smell the richness of the earth. I want them to watch in awe as
patches of sunlight and shadow chase one another over the brow of a hill on a
windy day. Fundamentally, I want them to have the opportunity to love this
earth as we have loved it, not to feel the inconsolable sorrow of having been
left something lesser, something dangerous; a shining world we broke before they
could inherit it.
Every dream we cherish, every cause we believe in rests
on the foundation of a livable planet. As you take in these public comments and
craft a plan going forward, please remember what your agency is named, and
stand firm against those who would sell our children’s future to the fossil-fuel
industry. The lives of those who come after us hang helplessly in the balance
of your deliberations.
Thank you.
Dr. Carl Whiting
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I know Carl though the Madison community branch of 350, a community group focused on working towards solutions on climate change.
Comments
Post a Comment