Letter to the Editor - Which is cheaper, disasters or fighting global warming

Editor,

For decades now, the world’s climate scientists have been insisting that global warming would increasingly cause extreme weather events — things like floods, flash droughts, fires and heat waves.

Who could have imagined they would be right?

Now that Hurricane Harvey has set a new record for rainfall in the United States, dropping more than 50 inches on Houston, and Montana is enduring an epic drought, with fires turning the air across the whole state into a health hazard, there is no longer any doubt. This summer is what global warming looks like — unprecedented flooding in one part of the country, exceptional drought in another. And, as the climate scientists again insist, it is going to keep getting worse if we do nothing, and then if we still do nothing, even worse than that, until eventually we disrupt nature’s economies so much our human economies will fail.

The argument against stopping global warming is that it would hurt the economy. Well, check out the bills when they come due for Houston, the cost of crop failure this summer to farmers and ranchers in Montana and the cost of fighting the out-of-control fires across Montana.

  Stopping global warming really would be cheaper — and better for the economy. It is past time we listened to the climate scientists, ignoring the lies from the fossil fuel industry, and did what we must do to give today’s children the future they deserve.

Wade Sikorski

Baker