To the editor:
I’m grateful to Huck Fairman for writing the inspiring “Solutions” column, and to the Princeton Packet for publishing this regular environmental update. Important though local news issues can be from day to day, the bigger picture must also be kept in mind. The global-scale phenomenon of human-caused climate change is continuing with inadequate action being taken by the U.S. to date, and we are all already beginning to experience its ill effects everywhere.
In two recent columns, “The heat and rain continue” (July 26, 2018) and “Our threatened Jersey Shore” (August 9, 2018), Fairman cogently presents compelling facts and statements from climate scientists describing global warming’s steadily increasing impacts, whether international (record-breaking heat in East Asia, Europe, and across the U.S., with deadly wildfires in consequence) or local (rapid sea level rise, a measurable effect of global warming, already affecting the Jersey shoreline for the worse).
The looming challenge of climate change does indeed demand swift and effective “solutions.” One proposed approach to the problem of unchecked carbon emissions is to put a price on carbon that is refunded to all households. As an efficient market correction, this type of policy is supported by economists along the liberal-to-conservative spectrum, and increasingly by a majority of Americans according to the Yale Climate Opinion Maps.
As the saying goes: if we are not part of the solution, then we are part of the problem. Let’s all be part of solutions to climate change.
Callie Hancock
Princeton
