In his March 29 column, Mark Rosenberg suggests that Americans cannot afford to pay for the rapid transition to renewable energy needed to drastically slow the pace of climate change. In fact, we cannot afford not to. We are already paying for climate change. The increasingly frequent and intense wildfires cost Californians nearly $20 billion in 2017, and the mounting tallies from the devastating fires around the state in 2018 are certain to be higher. The Fourth National Climate Assessment released last year estimated that climate change has caused U.S. taxpayers $350 billion dollars over the past decade alone. If we continue with “business as usual”, these costs will skyrocket in coming years due to the increased health costs of heat waves and spreading tropical diseases, rebuilding our water infrastructure to adapt to the declining snowpack, building barriers to prevent flooding of low-lying coastal cities, and myriad other impacts.  Investing now to rapidly transition to a more sustainable energy base will save us large sums of money over the long-term. It seems like a sound investment to us.

My husband and I are not in favor of the Scotts Valley Town Green as it is planned. The ability to mitigate the impact on our roads and other infrastructures cannot be adequately addressed. We simply do not have enough main outlet roads to service the additional population.

I was disappointed after reading an article last week by Mark Rosenberg, titled “Can the U.S. really stop global warming?” I have serious concerns about the way several issues were framed in this piece. However, before I make these points I want to make clear my biases; I do support the Green New Deal resolution because of my firm belief that we need a plan as large scale and serious as it is to address global warming (and the economic consequences that come with it) NOW; but as I will soon show, the Green New Deal resolution is about far more than that.

Dear editor,

Dear editor,

Dear Editor,

The issues about water at the recent workshop on the Santa Margarita Groundwater Basin are serious. Although it is unlikely that a severe water shortage will occur in our lifetimes, it’s important to create sustainability for future generations.

Dear editor,

Dear trustees,

Dear editor,