Editor,

We’ve had 10 “Earth Days” since Vice President Al Gore’s film (an Inconvenient Truth) nationalized the debate on climate change.

Gore’s film showed us that world temperatures had increased 1.4 degrees since the dawn of the industrial age when fossil fuels became the staple of our economic diet.

For 500,000 centuries, CO2 levels cycled between 180 and 310, but since 1950 we’ve shot to the current level of 408.

Predictably, world temperature averages and sea levels have risen, the ice caps are melting and the once Great Barrier reef is disappearing.

Your grandchildren will not see glaciers in Glacier National Park and an unprecedented 97 percent of creditable scientists agree that climate change is real, it is man caused and its effects will be disastrous.

Maybe it’s time to do something, like quit dumping CO2 into the atmosphere — and quick.

Sure, we’ve slowed the increase with electric cars, wind turbines, solar power and reduced coal burning, but we’re sure not bringing the levels of this heat trapping gas down. What’s needed is some national legislation to pin a true cost on the culprit, so the rules of supply and demand will curb CO2 emissions.

Despite grim news to the contrary, we still have a government that actually responds to the will of the people.

An impressive national advocacy group, Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) has succeeded in enlisting 19 legislators from the Republican Party to match 19 from the Democrats to enact legislation such as a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade mechanism to wean us of our climate-destroying propensity to burn petroleum.

CCL has a simple approach: an equal number from each party join the climate lobby to bridge the partisan divide, tax carbon and return revenues back to households and create meaningful jobs.

Numerous Democrats wait in the wings but the Republicans are a tougher sell.

They need to hear from you, me and your grandchildren.

Get some encouragement and a shot of adrenaline at citizensclimatelobby.com

Where to write: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/write-congress-about-climate-change/#/7/

Watch a video: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/why-carbon-fee-and-dividend/carbon-fee-dividend-video/

And yes, we have a local chapter: http://citizensclimatelobby.org/chapters/WA_Whidbey_Island/

Ninety seven percent of objective scientists say we can’t squander another 10 years, and I believe them.

Dean Enell

Langley