My daughter, Jordan, flew into Bozeman yesterday to visit for a few days before she starts grad school at Boston University in a couple of weeks. It’s always a joy when she’s here because we always have wide ranging and interesting conversations. Last evening was no exception. We were talking about my upcoming (potential) trip to Portugal and as conversations often do, we meandered away from that and ended up talking about climate change.
As you may or may not be aware, the United Nations just released an extensive report detailing the state of the world with respect to climate change and it painted a pretty grim picture. There should be no doubt that climate change is real given the extreme weather that we have all witnessed and been subject to this summer. And yet, there are still those who either don’t believe it is real or don’t believe it is as serious and as big an existential problem as it actually is. We were discussing this when Jordan made an excellent point.
She pointed out that most of the people in government (at least in the US) now are ‘older’ and the simple fact is, most of us in this generation will be dead and gone before the full effects of climate change are really felt. For most people, it is difficult to be willing to make sacrifices and change the way that the do things today when the fact is, they themselves will never see the benefits of making these changes. If you tell someone that something draconian will happen in 30 years and they don’t expect to be alive in 30 years, it can often turn into ‘so what’.
Unfortunately, there is no way that climate change can be tackled without significant government action and investment. Yes, we can all switch to hybrid vehicles and use our own bags when we go to the grocery store, but that will only go so far. That will not address situations like we have here in Montana such as the coal mining in Colstrip. There you have an entire town whose population are primarily dependent upon coal mining either directly or indirectly. You can’t just flip the switch and turn that off. And you have issues like that scattered across the entire country, e.g., West Virginia. In order to make the kinds of massive changes that are required to change the economies of these types of towns, will require huge amounts of government investment. The typical Republican solution to all problems to slash taxes and reduce government just will not work.
Until we get people in government who are willing to be looking ahead 20, 30 and 40 years and making the investments now for which, they themselves will likely never reap the benefits, future generations will pay a very heavy price. As I was telling Jordan last night, although I firmly believe that climate change is real and will continue to worsen during my lifetime, the fact is, I will not be around long enough to feel the full brunt of the future effects if we continue to do little to tackle this problem. She, however, and her children will feel the effects throughout their lives. She told me that in conversations with some of her contemporaries, some of them have stated they don’t intend to have children because they don’t want to subject them to what they see as a looming catastrophe. All of us should want a better world for our children and their children but it will require governments around the world, include the United States, to make massive investments to implement the types of changes that are required.
Unfortunately, the short-term focus and outright greed of so many politicians and corporations today are standing in the way of solving these very real problems. There were two articles in the Bozeman Chronicle this morning that serve as prime examples. They prompted me to write the following letter for submission to the Chronicle.
“I am so happy to see that our attorney general, Austin Knudsen, is using his time and our taxpayer dollars to tackle problems that plague everyday Montanans. The article, “State leading effort to overturn ban on bump stocks,” in the Chronicle, details his effort to file an amicus brief to the courts to have the ban on bump stocks overturned. As you recall, bump stocks are those devices that allow one to turn a semi-automatic weapon into a weapon that fires more rapidly, i.e., essentially into a fully automatic weapon. I’m still scratching my head to understand what particular problem this will solve for those of us who live here in Montana. Montana has one of the highest drunk driving fatality rates in the country. Montana has one of the highest suicide rates in the country (most by firearms I might add). The state has been feeling the effects of climate change with the excessive heat and widespread drought this summer. The pandemic is once again surging across the state. Housing for employees and staff shortages are plaguing businesses across the state. There is no shortage of challenges facing the people of this state and to have the attorney general spend even five minutes on bump stocks is an insult to us all. Couple this with the essay by guest columnist, Rep. Marilyn Marler, “GOP turning Montana into a playground for the wealthy,” and its very clear that the Republicans now controlling this state are rapidly turning ‘The Last Best Place’ into the ‘The Least Best Place’. “