Letter to the Editor: Doing Something about Creepy Weather

I am in transition, having sold a home and temporarily living, by the generosity of friends, on Sand Bay just outside Sturgeon Bay in a shelter that my friends affectionately refer to as The Shack.

Each night or early morning when I step outside with my dog, Lucinda, I have been met with warm, humid air. On one hand, this has been easy on me physically, but mostly, it’s creepy, considering this is mid-October in Wisconsin.

This early, dark morning on my way out the door, I checked my phone messages and caught the headlines of an article forwarded to me by a friend: “Adapt or Die, UK Environmental Agency Warns on Climate Change.” Fortunately, there is a plethora of information and hopeful actions we can take to curb the worst effects we are on course for.

“We and all living beings thrive by being actors in the planet’s regeneration, a civilizational goal that should commence and never cease. We practiced degeneration as a species, and it brought us to the threshold of an unimaginable crisis. To reverse global warming, we need to reverse global degeneration.” (Excerpted from Regeneration by Paul Hawken.) Hawken got his start in adult life as a small-business proprietor and understands necessity and opportunity. 

Family physician and Republican Utah state representative Ray Ward – along with 24 other conservative leaders – recently signed on in support of an op-ed in the Desert News newspaper supporting carbon-fee-and-dividend federal legislation. In a recent interview, he stated that he strongly supports such legislation as being a marketplace solution that will incentivize innovation without net harm to the economy while fitting his conservative principles by making polluters pay for their pollution.

We need the government, citizens, politicians and business to step up and put a price on carbon pollution. Please contact President Biden now to let him know what you want.

John Hermanson

Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin