It’s here, now

Climate change is often portrayed like something that happens far away – far away in space and time. Polar bears are losing their habitat because the ice melts, sea levels will rise in a (seemingly) distant future.

This year has brought it home that the place and time of climate change is here and now. Its impacts are not abstract anymore but are affecting us directly: multiple heat waves that broke records and made us hide inside. A drought in our region starting before the spring was even here and causing record low harvests. Wildfires springing up all over our region, blanketing us with smoke since early in the summer. Around the nation and the world, we watched unprecedented floods, record-breaking hurricanes, and more.

This is a taste of how our climate and with it, our way of living and our health, will be increasingly impacted if we continue our current greenhouse gas emissions. If we want to prevent the worst of global warming, we, as a society, need to take bold action to curb our emissions.

Carbon pricing constitutes such sweeping action: a progressive fee on greenhouse gas emissions reaches all sectors at once so that energy producers and industries quickly lower emissions. Be part of the solution and ask your representatives, Senators Cantwell and Murray, to take bold action such as pricing carbon to protect our environment and way of life here and now (you can do this using the link: citizensclimatelobby.org/monthly-calling-campaign).

Amelie Schmolke

Pullman