In Beth Daley’s article “Year was nation’s warmest on record” (Page A1, Jan. 9), about the shattering of heat records all across the country last year, Raymond S. Bradley says, “We will have to get used to living with this new baseline.”
Yes and no.
Yes, even if we stop all emissions today, we’ve changed our climate enough to cause more droughts that destroy crops in the Midwest, more wildfires that consume Colorado, more superstorms that drown New York, and more tornadoes that ravage Massachusetts.
But no, we must not get used to it. We did not get used to the cold war, acid rain, apartheid, the ozone hole, DDT, or discrimination by race and gender. We did something about it.
We need to roll back our use of oil, coal, and natural gas, and roll out solar, wind, and other renewables, and work for energy efficiency. If we do not, the climate will become so extreme that we will never be able to get used to it.
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