The right ignoring climate science will imperil us all.
To the editor: No, Administrator Lee Zeldin, the point of the Environmental Protection Agency is not to make cars cheaper or businesses more profitable (“Trump’s EPA takes steps to roll back dozens of environmental regulations,” March 12). Rather, the EPA’s mission is “to protect human health and environment.” We hoped that you would honor that mission, and your Jewish values, and do all you can to safeguard Americans’ health, safety and futures. Sustaining the planet and life — l’dor v’dor (“From generation to generation” in Hebrew”) — requires nothing less.
Instead, you are promoting the fossil fuel industry, which has knowingly created the fast-accelerating climate crisis. You just announced “31 historic actions” that will undo decades of climate progress and protections. You have purged scientists and public health experts, shut down the environmental justice division and clawed back funds for clean energy, cars and buses.
Science makes clear that slashing longstanding protections to “unleash” more extraction and burning of fossil fuels will accelerate the cascade toward climate catastrophe and threaten the future of humanity.
Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, New York
The writer is founder and CEO of Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action
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To the editor: The anti-science leaders on the right are ignoring years of overwhelming scientific evidence supporting human-caused climate change. What they are saying, in essence, is that since the beginning of the industrial revolution humans have put billions of tons of various pollutants into the closed greenhouse of the Earth’s atmosphere without it having any impact. Nonsense.
Steven Rice, Thousand Oaks
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To the editor: So our new EPA administrator is proudly announcing getting rid of all work to reduce greenhouse gases, exclaiming, “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion …” If he wants to experience a dagger in the heart, I suggest he come out here and meet with many of the former residents of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, whose homes had lasted a century or more with no problem, and tell them how humorously mythological climate change is.
Douglas Green, Sherman Oaks
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To the editor: Climate change is studied by many scientists who have gathered tons of data to support their claim that global warming is a real problem. Those of us who fight to solve climate change do so on the basis of that science, not on any religious belief.
Murray Zichlinsky, Long Beach
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To the editor: It was a sad news day to read about cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the EPA. Both agencies were actually formalized in 1970 by Republican President Richard Nixon. Back in the 1960s, rivers were catching on fire, air was dangerous to breathe and houses were being built on toxic landfills. Sulfuric acid in rain was killing trees and fish in lakes and it was dissolving marble buildings. The EPA protects American citizens from such dangers. The NOAA provides crucial information about the oceans, atmosphere, coastal regions, hurricanes, tornadoes, atmospheric rivers and climate change.
Phil Beauchamp, Chino Hills
