I’d like to add to Judith Bernstein’s important commentary on the climate crisis (“No. 1 priority,” Feb. 20). Food supply and disease are two dire climate threats to human existence.
Whether it’s a huge corporate farm or a family’s subsistence plot, today’s farming is the result of trial and error that’s been going on since hunter-gatherers began keeping animals and growing crops 10,000 years ago. We’ve had the same world climate for that entire time. Radical change from those ancient patterns of annual heat/cold and wet/dry will require new farmlands and new ways of farming, costly changes that will favor only those who can pay. The loss of a large fraction of the world’s food supply won’t make life easy.
Similarly, diseases’ spread to animals (including humans) and to plants by insects or contact with infected surfaces, soil, and dust are also governed by climatic factors. Radical change to earth’s ancient climate will cause humans as well as food-source animals and plants to sicken and die.
We must act fast to prevent the earth’s climate from spiraling into disaster. Big expenses to avoid climate catastrophe, said now to be too disruptive to the economy, are a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to what delay will cost in lives.
R. D. Bowlus
Los Osos
This article appears in Feb 27 – Mar 8, 2020.
Climate action is my #1 voting priority, too and will continue to be until all candidates understand its’ importance. Thank you for this note, RD.
Single topic voters are the “low info” type that WE THE PEOPLE loathe.