Dear Editor
Sept. 21, we have an opportunity to combine our voices and demand action on climate change from world leaders as they arrive in New York for a United Nations climate change meeting. The message is clear. It is past time to leave the coal in the hole and the oil in the soil.
Human activity has increased carbon dioxide from 275 ppm to 400 ppm. We need to get below 350 ppm by reversing our current rate of adding two ppm annually. The 1 C rise in temperature experienced has had frightening impacts; fresh water sources dry up as glaciers disappear, warmth dependent insects expand their territory bringing human and economic illness and death, sea levels rise converting coastal populations into environmental refugees and droughts, floods and increasingly acidic oceans threaten our food sources. Extreme weather events convert independent communities into aid-dependent disaster zones in minutes.
The 99 per cent of us are going to have to be heard because the deafening voices of the one per cent are endangering us all. We make daily sacrifices to keep the one per cent in the manner in which they have become habituated to so we can make different daily sacrifices to keep our planet habitable. Please support the People's Climate March by adding your voice.
Nancy Carswell
Shellbrook
