Climate change and democracy
5-4-2019George Burman (Valley Voices, April 27) elucidated frightening consequences of climate change, likening human civilization to the crew of the Titanic in its denial and inaction. Bottom line: global warming is real, it’s bad, and we caused it, by spewing billions of tons of greenhouse gases into Earth’s atmosphere.
Yet we may avoid catastrophe if we take action immediately. We must insist that our elected representatives support HR 763, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. This revenue-neutral bill puts a gradually increasing fee on carbon at the source, returning the proceeds to American families as a dividend while reducing America’s emissions by 40%.
But that’s not all. Global warming has been understood since the 1970s, but the fossil fuel industry has waged a massive, unrelenting campaign of lobbying, donations, and outright lying to keep Americans from accepting the facts. To counter that, we must also support HJR 48, the “We the People Amendment,” which will establish that (1) corporations are not persons entitled to constitutional rights and (2) money is not speech and can be regulated in elections. We must take back our democracy from the monied interests in order to tackle climate change and other problems we face.
Robert Pethoud, Fresno
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