Joyce writes:

Dear Twim team,

I appreciate very much your family of podcasts. I find them very entertaining and informative. And I appreciate very much your listener picks and comments related to climate change. As you have pointed out, there will be many detrimental effects on disease transmission and environmental conditions as part of the many catastrophic effects of climate change.

However, I would suggest that a more proactive stance might be encouraged. Unless citizens and scientist band together to demand changes in policy related to climate change, the politicians in the United States are unlikely to respond adequately.

That means that every one of us has to take action and I have found a group that has a very positive and focused approach that is bipartisan and reasonable.  It provides a good way of magnifying the effects of individual actions. And the name of the group is Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL).

It is true that our president is not offering leadership on this issue but that is no reason not to work hard to build support for a bipartisan bill recently introduced that would take take aggressive action to combat climate change.  It will take time to build understanding and wider support and whether or not that can happen in the next 2 years does not matter. The more action we take now, the more it will help bring action sooner. This is not a political issue but just a matter of reason, logic and science.

I have provided some links that are just representative of the information that we all need to be aware of.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2018/10/08/the-energy-202-the-clock-is-ticking-to-stop-catastrophic-global-warming-top-climate-scientists-say/5bba6db41b326b7c8a8d1884/?utm_term=.da36b0217c1e

10 of CCL’s major accomplishments
Bipartisan carbon fee bill introduced in House

Citizens Climate Lobby is growing exponentially and since we are in a democracy, if it keeps going this way, we  will succeed, but we all have to work on it now because time is of the essence. Throwing up our hands in frustration is of no use.  And an added bonus is that participating in this group is empowering and uplifting.

As scientists, and people interested in science, we have a special responsibility to be part of this, because we can best understand the evidence and the consequences.

I also would suggest that any science organizations that anyone is part of, or in fact, any organization that you belong to, should endorse this bipartisan approach.

And the CCL website has a page that gives instructions on how to do that.

Support for Carbon Fee and Dividend

Thanks again,

Joyce Waterhouse, PhD