Stop printing denials

Why does The Spokesman continue to publish so many letters from global warming deniers? Several leading newspapers and science magazines now ban such letters on the very accurate grounds that they interfere with solving a confirmed, urgent global danger.

Please do the same. The right to free speech does not include the right to endanger the public. We can’t tell people in a burning building to ignore fire alarms.

All the world’s major national scientific academies now agree that we must outlaw fossil fuels altogether within a few decades or face grave risks to civilization itself. The best economists studying this also say the net cost of this change is so small, and the cost of inaction so great, that we simply have no other rational choice.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the fossil fuels industry and its political actors urge us to disregard these alarms - after all, this is the world’s richest industry fighting to postpone its imminent demise. Given that each day of delay kills people and threatens our future freedom and prosperity, let’s listen to the experts on this one and discuss solutions rather than amplify the voices of stallers.

David Camp

Spokane