Letter: I-1631 addresses climate change

This month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report applying the world’s best science to predict the progression of climate change over the next couple of decades and concluded that the impacts will be severe, with a world of worsening food shortages, wildfires and severe weather, and die-off of coral reefs. This worldwide nightmare can be prevented only by immediately starting a serious effort to dramatically decrease carbon-based emissions.

This month the Nobel Prize (Economics) was awarded to William Nordhaus and Paul Romer, two Americans who studied decreasing carbon-based emissions with a carbon tax, such as the one proposed by Washington’s I-1631, the Carbon Emissions Fee Measure. We can vote for this initiative on the ballots arriving this week.

The Trump administration does not seem to understand the severity of the developing crisis. President Trump is withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords, and he has announced policies to increase coal burning, relax standards on automobile fuel efficiency and increase other emissions of industrial pollution. The Republican Congress seems to support him. A superior option is obvious: vote for Christine Brown to represent us in Congress. She will be a strong voice opposing the administration’s dangerous policies.