Titanic and climate change
Let’s time-travel onto the bridge of the unsinkable Titanic. We’ll warn the captain to slow down, but he replies. “We like traveling fast! I don’t believe in icebergs, and a crew member agrees with me. Ships sink all the time. It’s natural. Besides, God won’t let anything bad happen to us.”
The reply sounds absurd.
In 1912, Michigan Senator William Alden Smith chaired the Titanic investigation committee. He concluded, “indifference to danger was one of the direct and contributing causes of this unnecessary tragedy.” So which was the real threat, iceberg or flawed thinking?
Today, when people argue against mitigating climate change, the far-reaching consequences of their similarly flawed, indifferent thinking are infinitely more serious.
Ask your representatives and senators to protect our spaceship Earth by putting a price on carbon to reduce emissions, slow and reverse climate change, and buy ourselves some time. Please. For the sake of our grandkids.
Simon Smith
Pullman
Work to be done
It ain’t over until the fat lady sings, Yogi Berra reminded us. Yes, Joe Manchin’s dealt us a setback on climate change, child tax credit extension, reducing prescription drug costs, etc. etc. etc. But if we don’t throw in the towel and leave the field prematurely, we can still win this, just not this year.
We need to add some new hitters to Team Democracy in 2022 so we can afford to let Manchin and Sinema stay in the dugout if they don’t want to play ball. To accomplish this, we must get the voting and election protection bills passed immediately.
Then we have to start doing the work (sooner rather than later) to keep the House and add to the Senate roster so we can deliver. It’s what the “99%” wants and needs and the zillionaire “1%” will have to help us pay for it. And if we don’t, well, Team Coup is already at work tearing down the stadium.
Karen Swoope
Colfax
Gas prices
Headline from last weekend’s paper: “Biden says U.S. gas prices will drop soon but it will take some time.” What?
I don’t think “the time” will occur while Biden is in office and his anti-American oil policies are in effect and his ongoing big-government spending continues deflating our dollar.
Lucky Brandt
Kooskia
