School Days, School Haze
By Roger Stephenson
Schools across New Hampshire are opening their doors to a new school year and parents and teachers are focused on the here-and-now: bus schedules, textbooks, sports and after school clubs.
As we enter a new season (meteorological fall begins September 1)a startling fact from the previous seasons of the year points to the future – and what that future might look like for today’s school children.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency focused on the condition of our oceans and the atmosphere, the period January-July 2015 was the warmest globally since records began. Scientists think 2015 stands a good chance of breaking last year’s record as the warmest calendar year on record globally, too.
Today’s fifth graders have lived through 7 of the hottest years on record. Our children are growing up in a different climate than we did.
Warming trends globally, and for that matter warming trends in New Hampshire are easy to see. The connection between warming trends and emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is clear to scientists who study these topics. Today’s parents of school-aged children will be grandparents of newborns and toddlers in a warmer world. How warm it will be when today’s school children begin their own families? Plenty warm and stormier too, because today’s emissions will stay in the atmosphere for many hundreds of years.
The good news is that we can reduce the risks of future climate change. Just how warm and stormy depends a great deal on the decisions we make today regarding the use of fossil fuels.
The most effective way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is to reduce fossil fuel consumption and replace oil and coal with cleaner sources of energy. Making changes in transportation matters and the United States is already making dramatic improvements in fuel efficiency.
Making changes in how we produce electricity matter, too. Power plants produce roughly 40 percent of the nation’s total CO2 emissions. The EPA has released a plan to reduce carbon pollution from existing power plants 32 percent by 2030
The Clean Power Plan is also good news for today’s New Hampshire children because of the health benefits associated with reducing pollution from coal-fired power plants upwind from us.
In 2030 today’s preschooler will be able to vote. Will members of Congress still be disputing climate science then? Will the Congress and the president elected in 2016 try to repeal or delay the Clean Power Plan?
Despite an administration acting on climate change and despite a Supreme Court that ruled the EPA had authority to regulate carbon emissions, leaders in the House and Senate seem determined to undermine the administration’s efforts and the law of the land by legislating clean air regulations out of existence.
Our congressional delegation knows New Hampshire suffers from pollution from out-of-state power plants and that New Hampshire is often referred to as ‘the tailpipe of the nation’. We need their commitment today to reducing emissions, and we need all four members of our congressional delegation to publicly support the Clean Power Plan – and do so loud and clear both in New Hampshire and in Washington.
Absent congressional action to curb carbon pollution the EPA plan is the only approach on the table, and delay is not an option. We need every parent to take a moment in the first week of school to ask Senators Ayotte and Shaheen to support the Clean Power Plan. As parents let’s protect the world in which today’s children will be parents themselves, sooner than we realize.
Roger Stephenson Stratham NH Dad
Live Free or Die Alliance
www.livefreeordiealliance.org
Source: http://townhall.livefreeordiealliance.org/xn/detail/4091641:BlogPost:75171
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