During the past year, I have published letters and op-eds in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal (among many others).
But my contributions are apparently not worthy of the local Centre Daily Times.
Here is a letter to the editor they have just refused to publish. I
**UPDATE 9/9/18** Thanks to the CDT for finally publishing my letter!
We Need New Leadership
Adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere warm’s the surface of our planet. That’s scientific fact, affirmed by every major scientific body in the U.S. and around the world that has weighed in on the matter.
We have been conducting an unprecedented, uncontrolled experiment with the one planet we know that can support life. We have added massive amounts of carbon dioxide to the air through fossil fuel burning and other human activities, and we continue to do so. The predictions we made decades above--warming atmosphere and oceans, melting of glaciers and ice sheets, rising sea levels, and more extreme weather events—are sadly coming true.
We must stop this experiment if we care about a livable future for our children and grandchildren. We must transition away from the burning of fossil fuels to renewable energy.
And we need the political leadership and courage to make that happen.
Representative Tom Marino denies the irrefutable science behind climate change and has blocked policies that would have us join the rest of the world in acting on climate change. He is representing the fossil fuel interests rather than our interests.
We need new leadership in congress. We need a politician who will accept what science has to say about the threats we face and will support common-sense policies for dealing with those threats. We have in Marc Friedenberg just such an individual and this November we have an opportunity to elect him to congress.
Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center, Penn State University.
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