Dear Congress: Fires and and Floods – July 2021

Instead of a lengthy post summarizing all of the fires and floods I know of in the last few weeks worldwide (think Canada, Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Siberia, Alaska… or Louisiana/Tennessee, Nigeria, France/Germany/Belgium, China, India) and the concomitant commentary about how this is becoming more destructive every year it occurred to me that I needed to reach out to my congressperson who makes policy decisions. What I wrote is below, with an attempt to edit our where I live. When you think policy and environment you think of the Green New Deal or Red New Deal, but what I wrote was intentionally open-ended to see what response I receive.

You too should write to your representatives!

Dear Representative,

I’m a constituent.  I am concerned about threats to our environment, habitat, and species.

This month our district experienced an unprecedented heat wave that caused dozens of sudden deaths.  Heatwaves have contributed to a fire season which starts earlier every year.  This is connected to the droughts, which means we have less water supply than usual.

Globally, there has been heatwaves and unprecedented heat in at leave five continents this month.  At the same time, there has been torrential, destructive, flooding happening in many places in the U.S., and least seven major world cities in the last couple of weeks.  These floods have devastated at least five continents in a short amount of time.

These disasters have been intensified by climate change.  The climate crisis we’re now in is made worse by human carbon emissions.  There are several good ideas to mitigate this crisis and make sure that us, and future generations, have an environment that we can live in.  My question in what action or legislation you would promote and cosponsor to mitigate the climate emergency we are in?

With appreciation for your representation,