Editor:
When I first open the Peach Arch News, I jump right to the Letters to the Editor section. I don’t always agree with other opinions, but rarely do they inspire me enough to send a letter of rebuttal in. Yet, here I am, writing a letter to explain the difference between weather and climate change to White Rock resident Paul Griffin.
If we use the human body as an analogy, it may make sense to those who deny the fact that our world is in serious trouble. Think of the planet Earth as a human body with a core temperature of 37 degrees C. When it feels cold to our skin, we need a sweater and on a hot day, we remove the sweater.
Our basic core temperature stays stable. That is weather. Now if we get sick and our temperature goes up with a fever, we run the risk of dying once it hits 40 degrees. That is only three degrees higher than average. That is climate.
Our Earth is experiencing rising temperatures, worldwide. It’s no longer climate change we’re living through. It’s environmental breakdown.
Deniers like to throw around distorted facts – like the climate has always been changing, that the weather was hotter in other decades, that humans are not causing the changes, but it is natural. Yes, our climate has changed hugely over hundreds of millions of years.
But what deniers seem to ignore is the fact that our continued use of fossil fuels, factory livestock farming, deforestation, glyphosate spraying, etc., has accelerated the warming of our Earth.
CO2 levels are now the highest they have ever been in human history; they are higher than three million years ago. Exxon predicted the exact date and CO2 amount back in 1982 when we would hit the tipping point – we have hit it now and Exxon’s date was 2020.
And they specified that it would be from the use of fossil fuels.
Since that time, the fossil fuel industry has continued to fund organizations that deny corporate involvement with the destruction of our Earth.
I suggest that anyone who supports continued use of fossil fuels, take the time to read the report prepared by Exxon. It can be found at insideclimatenews.org.
No matter if you believe in climate change, why would you not want a cleaner, less polluted world for future generations by insisting on a green, sustainable future?
Vicki Pauze, White Rock