Opinion

EDITOR,

I recently spoke with Annette Marcum, the director and founder of Valley Churches United Missions, on the phone about the extreme need in our area this year.

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.

EDITOR,

EDITOR,

What makes a good school board?

EDITOR,

EDITOR,