Editor,

Everything is new now. They year 2014 was the hottest on record until 2015. January was the warmest month yet until February. This was by far the wettest winter on record for our region following our driest, most forest-fired summer ever.

Tornadoes and hail here?

The eastern and southern United States was slammed by extreme weather events all year. Meanwhile, the FBI and several state attorneys general are investigating Exxon for their role in the global warming cover up. They knew 40 years ago it would be a problem.

Turns out, fracking for natural gas contributes more to climate chaos than burning coal due to methane leaks. No wonder even the Rockefeller Foundation joined the multi-trillion dollar fossil fuel divestment campaign.

So, are you finally ready to break free from fossil fuels?

May 13-15 you are invited to engage in a global effort challenging the morality and ethics of continuing to mine, refine and burn fossil fuels. Concerned people from communities throughout our region and beyond will converge for a non-violent mass action at the Shell/Tesoro refinery in Anacortes.

The refinery is the largest source of carbon pollution in our state, it endangers downwind communities and workers with toxic chemical emissions and buys tar sands crude oil from the brutally destructive strip-mines of Alberta.

Meanwhile, corporate officials want to increase both explosive oil train shipments and toxic chemical production facilities there.

This is one of five actions in the United States. Internationally, other destructive, industrial sites will be targeted that week. In at least 10 other countries, from the Niger Delta of west Africa to the Brazil’s Amazon Basin to the coal strip-mine zones of rural Wales, people will protest.

Gary Piazzon

Coupeville