The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate assessment report stated unequivocally that the weather events we’re seeing around the world — wildfires, floods, more intense storms, heat waves, and droughts — are just the beginning of the effects of human-driven climate change. And it’s going to get worse — that’s out of our control. What we do have control over is how much worse.
Personally, I am heartsick when I consider the world we will be turning over to our children and grandchildren, angry about our leaders kicking this can down the road for three decades, and tired of my own powerlessness.
Here’s the good news. This IPCC report is prologue to the world climate summit in Scotland this November. We have two-plus months to make our voices heard so that the U.S. delegates go to Glasgow with a sense of urgency.
What can we do?
Read the IPCC report’s summary for policymakers (41 pages). At the very least, read the summary statements in blue at the beginning of each section.
Contact members of Congress. Did you know that only one in 10 Americans have contacted their elected representatives about climate change, according to the Pew Research Center? That’s disheartening.
Write a letter to the editor to your local paper and one of the state papers.
Wear a climate change pin and engage with people who notice it.
The time is now. If not, what are you going to tell your children and grandchildren when they ask you what you did about climate change?
Allan R. MacDonald
New London
The importance
The politicization of the issue of COVID-19 vaccination in the United States is a discouraging national tragedy — a Greek tragedy experienced not by a few but by the whole citizenship of our country.
It is a tragedy of individuals acting against their own self-interest to create a mythology for one narcissistic sociopath for his own personal aggrandizement. While it might be satisfying to wish that the Darwin Effect would resolve this resistance to logic and eager acceptance of a vaccine that would save their lives and those of others, it would not actually achieve any such resolution, for several reasons.
One is that even if all anti-vaxxers were infected, most would not succumb to this disease. Two is that the disease would only increase in strength and spread as befits the mutants it generates, the fourth version so far of it. And therefore three is that vulnerable, unsuspecting, and unwilling victims in our society would continue to experience this pandemic and suffer and die from it.
It is only when a society achieves herd (more correctly and personally called “community”) immunity of 93% that a disease can be reduced to extinction, because it has too few people to further affect and thus loses the opportunity and numbers for mutating.
The tragedy of this politicization is that it comes from a distorted version of the American value of individualism. This present skewed and unhealthy expression is tragically not balanced by another important American value — that of shared community — the caring and concern for others. The rugged individual mythology needs always to be balanced with the community barn building experience of our history.
Therefore, I appeal and plead with the COVID anti-vaxxers to join again in the long American history of coming together as a society and acknowledging that this combination of individualism and community is what has made history’s first real democracy so successful. Please — for your sake and the sake of our nation — get vaccinated!
Philip Eller
Norwich
Contact lawmakers now
on redistricting
In February, the New Hampshire Senate Election Law & Municipal Affairs Committee voted down SB 80, which would have established an independent advisory commission on redistricting — on partisan lines just days after the bill was introduced.
Liz Tentarelli, the president of the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire, said, “The speed at which this bipartisan bill was rejected should concern all Granite Staters. Politicians should not be able to make backroom deals that rig the balance of power for the next 10 years.”
Now that the census data is out, New Hampshire residents should be very concerned about how fairly we will be represented in Congress.
The Fair Maps Coalition wants the House Special Committee on Redistricting to be totally transparent. They must:
■have at least one open meeting prior to and after maps are drawn;
■notify the public seven days before each meeting;
■create a way for all citizens to be able to see and submit redistricting alternatives;
■allow all citizens to be able to see and submit comments;
■release any data they have to the public immediately.
I am asking New Hampshire voters to get involved by writing to the chair and vice chair of the House committee, Barbara Griffin, barbara.griffin@leg.state.nh.us, and Steven Smith, Steven.Smith@leg.state.nh.us, or calling them at 603-271-3661, before Wednesday. Tell them that you want fair and transparent redistricting, citing the bulleted points listed above.
Sharon Racusin
Hanover
Biden’s poorly conceived
retreat in Afghanistan
The level of incompetence demonstrated by President Joe Biden in implementing his decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan is beyond shocking. It is patently obvious for the entire world to see that our commander-in-chief was ill-prepared for the aftermath and lacked an appreciation of the consequences of his reckless decision.
The hasty, abrupt troop removal that surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban is a costly defeat and our country’s Neville Chamberlain moment. When all is said and done, Biden’s poorly conceived retreat wasted a trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money, and much more importantly, the lives of more than 2,400 American soldiers, along with many lives of our allies and Afghans.
This is one of the most shameful episodes in our history and has done irreparable harm to our global reputation, which was already severely damaged. With the Taliban firmly in control, Afghanistan very well may become yet again a haven for fanatical jihadists who seek to destroy the United States and other freedom-loving nations through the instruments of terror.
Mark Latham
Hartford