Letter to the Editor: We All Can Be Gretas

Last week in the Green section, a Gibraltar senior, Solomon Lindenberg, wrote an article about environmental issues that I highly recommend everyone read. It encourages me to see more and more young people seeing a problem, whether it’s gun control or our environment; making a statement; and forcing us as adults to really think and then hopefully do something.

He’s right about the lawmakers in Congress. The laws they’re passing for the environment won’t even affect them – or me, for that matter, as a senior. I do have seven grandchildren whom I worry about every day as I watch the deregulation of our laws pertaining to clean air, water and ground safety. What I have learned during my many years is that money talks, and we see it daily in our politics.

So is there hope? There was a time when rivers and lakes were on fire and were cleaned up and made viable again, so the answer is yes – if we collectively put our minds to it. People have to understand the difference between weather and climate. In simple terms, weather is a state of the atmosphere in a given place and time. Climate is an entire set of meteorological and environmental conditions defined over long periods of time. That’s why listening to the scientists is so important.

What does this mean for adults as we watch the unfolding of our next elections? For one, I feel we need younger people in office, term limits, and someone not promising the moon, but instead, commonsense approaches to our problems. We need to listen and read up on all the candidates and vote for the best one, not vote just for a party. The largest contingent in the country are the nonvoters. This must change if we want to improve our environment and living conditions for all people.

Remember: We can all be Gretas in different ways because if we don’t take care of this Earth of ours, where will we live?

Carol Schmidt

Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin