Pay now or pay later

I am responding to Mark Duclos’ letter to the editor (“Tax will hurt more than help,” Jan. 24) about Gov. Inslee’s plan to tax carbon dioxide in order to reduce its pollution. Duclos says he objects to the tax’s effect on “the little guy.” I have a different take on the tax.

Since the Industrial Revolution our society has been adding increasingly more carbon dioxide to the environment by burning fossil fuels. These greenhouse gases cause more global warming, faster glacial melt, increased sea level rise, more droughts, more forest fires.

Over the last four years global temperatures have been the hottest on record since we started to keep such records. Hurricanes are getting more intense with the rising of ocean temperatures. All these realities are affecting us and the other animals and plants living around us.

My question of Mr. Duclos and others who agree with him is, “Do you not see the cost to us of all this heating up of the planet and its oceans?” We either pay now to stop this misuse of our natural resources, or we’ll be paying in increasingly bigger ways with ever more forest fires, flooding of our coastal cities, loss of workable ecosystems, etc.

Pauline Druffel

Spokane