On Monday, a letter to the editor stated global warming is a bunch of hooey and that decrying its dangers is like Chicken Little telling us that the sky is falling.
The contributor is a 1953 graduate of Iola High School, which puts him on the other side of 80.
That same day, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg addressed world leaders assembled for a special climate summit of the United Nations.
I shouldnt be up here, the Swedish youth said. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean.
But it is precisely because her elders have failed to adequately address the dangers of climate change that the wisp of a girl could stand as a force, warning the worlds leaders, the eyes of all future generations are on you, and will know whom to blame if their efforts arent redoubled.
MUCH LIKE gun control, racial and gender equality and same-sex marriage, todays generations are divided on climate change.
On Friday, an estimated 4 million youthful protestors participated in demonstrations around the world to decry the lack of leadership in addressing greenhouse gas emissions and their role in raising the earths temperature.
That Thunberg came to the United States via a zero-emissions sailboat to deliver her sharp rebuke is poignant. Despite our growing capabilities to go green, the U.S. is reversing many of its emission-control standards and, in fact, is on track to spew more toxins, drill for more fossil fuels, and dump more waste in our rivers and streams thanks to the administration of President Donald Trump, an affirmed climate-change denier.
Mr. Trump is the standard-bearer of a generation protective of the status quo. Their argument is that the damage to the worlds atmosphere is overblown, despite 30 years of scientific evidence proving humankinds culpability. The shrinking ice fields, rising temperatures and more extreme weather events are natural phenomena, they say, and not the result of unfitted smokestacks and tailpipes that release carbon emissions into the air.
But we baby boomers are also of a generation who have seen the United States make amazing progress combatting air and water pollution. We remember smog so dense from factories and industries that its particles smeared our windows not to mention our lungs. In 1970, Congress passed the Clean Air Act enforcing filtering mechanisms.
We remember when Lake Erie was declared dead in the 1960s and Clevelands Cuyahoga River caught fire because nearby factories used them as dumping grounds for pollutants. In 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, tightening regulations on industrial waste.
And in their efforts today to build a new elementary school, local school officials are having to deal with toxic waste from 100 years ago left by the smelter and zinc industries that continue to make the soil hazardous.
So we know all too well of the dangerous path we were on and how regulations have helped steer us in a cleaner, safer direction. We also know that still more needs to be done to get our planet back in balance.
Its our grandchildren, not us, who will suffer as the atmosphere becomes increasingly toxic if we do not change our ways.
How dare you, put that burden on us, the teen activist Thunberg chided her elders.
Shes right.
As those in power right now, its our job to give future generations a better world than the one we inherited, not one on the brink of disaster.
