Letter to the editor

Playing Chicken with Our Future

You may have seen reports that Republican lawmakers in Washington are making plans – in case they come into full power – to dismantle the policies that have been put in place to reduce carbon emissions and turn back the pace of climate change. This would be a terrible, almost unimaginable, gamble with our future.

It reminds me of old movies about testosterone-fueled teenage boys, agreeing to race their souped-up cars directly at each other at full acceleration – in a game of “chicken” to see who would flinch first. Full-on climate deniers and fossil fuel boosters are playing this kind of insanely dangerous game, except that what we would all be accelerating toward is not a couple of tons of oncoming metal but something vastly more powerful: the unlimited force of Nature itself, which absolutely will not flinch. And instead of just two crazed teenagers putting their lives at risk, all of us will suffer the impact.

Could climate deniers be right to minimize or scoff at the danger – to claim that we don’t need to worry about the impact of fossil fuels and the billions of tons of carbon dioxide being poured into our atmosphere each year? In the sense that “absolutely anything is possible” I suppose the answer is yes. But the chance that they are right has become so exceedingly slim that, as the saying goes, it is now “vanishingly small.” The consensus about climate change, its accelerating dangers, and the fact that it is caused by human activity, is as solid as solid gets – with virtually all top climate scientists worldwide, and thousands of high-quality, peer-reviewed studies agreeing that we are rushing toward danger at full throttle.

And what the scientists have been projecting matches what we see with our own eyes – the fires, the smoke, the floods, the droughts, the storms, the heat, all coming with unprecedented intensity. The suffering is already terrible, and Nature has barely started delivering the full impact of what we have instigated.

Today we are on the brink of a critical red line: 1.5 C global temperature rise. This is the point, scientists say, that would still allow us the chance – if we take the boldest of actions – to avoid the more extreme impacts of climate change. Unless we face the reality of what is coming, and mobilize collective, courageous action at a level we have not seen since WWII, it will soon be too late to put on the brakes or swerve away. We will not be able to avoid a truly tragic outcome for our children and grandchildren – a world far less safe and hospitable, more full of widespread suffering, than human civilization has ever seen. Will that be our legacy?

It is not yet too late – not quite – if we can mobilize truly bold political will. But the distance to impact continues to shrink, and we cannot allow anyone to convince us that it is alright to continue to accelerate.

Thom Krystofiak

Fairfield