We Now Need to Adapt
Dear Editors:
Thank you for publishing Ms. Blatt’s op-ed educating us about river pollution and the sewage notification bill. It’s heartening that our Commonwealth’s leaders did the right thing for the health of our communities.
I do wish they had done the same for climate change. The last-minute wrangling that often happens on Beacon Hill meant that when Baker objected to some provisions, there was no time left to make amendments. Procrastination never pays, even though it’s something we have all done.
Ms. Blatt mentioned climate resilience: we now need to adapt to more frequent storms, larger concentrations of rain, and rising seas that will slow river outflows to the ocean. So much money will be spent by towns, businesses, and individual citizens because of our collective procrastination on this crucial issue. We must mitigate, i.e. stop, global overheating, so we will have to adapt less.
It feels too big, I know. Local issues are so much more immediate and obvious. But there are already local people fighting so that national climate legislation will be just, fast, and lasting, and they are always looking for help. Readers can join in by going to citizensclimatelobby.org, or in Spanish, climavivible.org.
Tamara Kellogg, M.D.