Op-Eds and Letters

by Sylvia Neely and Dick Jones** Recently about 50 people, including local municipal and county officials, toured the solar installation at the University Area Joint Authority which provides wastewater treatment for five municipalities. Cory Miller, UAJA’s executive director, described steps that UAJA is taking to save energy, steps that are expected to create at least $7 million in savings over 30 years. The first phase of this project, consisting of 7,600 solar panels in a field in College Township as well as a 1.5 megawatt… Read More »Op-Ed: Solar Energy, Carbon Fee and Nuclear Energy Are Topics for Climate Discussions

by Dick Jones Jesus knew how to tell a story. He understood that none of the people listening to his parable—least of all the lawyer who asked, “Who is my neighbor?”—would have considered a Samaritan fit for that description. That was the whole point. He was showing his audience how to think outside the box. So who is my neighbor when it comes to climate change? To answer that question, I invite you to arrive at an understanding of neighborhood that goes beyond our street address, our… Read More »Who is my neighbor when it comes to climate change?

By Sylvia Neely Climate change is a big problem and it calls for big solutions. No matter how conscientious we may be at reducing our personal greenhouse gas emissions, ultimately we need to find solutions at a national level to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. This effort must be bipartisan, for both practical and ideological reasons. Even if we imagine a victory by Democrats in 2020, giving the party most closely identified with climate change control of the House, Senate, and Presidency, it… Read More »Op-Ed: Climate Change and the Constitution

Eric Boeldt Jonathan Brockopp’s piece in the Aug. 4th edition of the CDT concerning the ethics of climate change was very interesting, but did not go far enough. He did not mention an ethical way to solve the problem of human caused global warming. He mentioned that we should each minimize our carbon footprint, but that is, as we know, the bare minimum. He also mentioned helping others rebuild who have been devastated by global warming, but that is not fixing the problem. Helping others… Read More »Letter: Making a difference with climate change

By Mark Neely Back in 2009, Stanford engineering professor Mark Z. Jacobson and transportation scientist Mark Delucchi, of the University of California at Davis, laid out “A Plan for a Sustainable Future” in Scientific American. It would get the world to an all wind-water-solar economy by 2030. Later the deadline was moved back to 2050, but what stuck was not so much the details of the engineering plan as the casual estimate of the degree of national effort required. “Society has achieved massive transformations before,”… Read More »Opinion: Bipartisanship needed in the ‘war’ on climate change

By Dick Jones In January the Pentagon issued an ominous report to Congress on how climate change impacts the armed forces and national security. Two-thirds of 79 “mission-essential” military installations are vulnerable to flooding. Half are exposed to wildfires and mudslides. “The effects of a changing climate are a national security issue with potential impacts to DOD missions, operational plans and installations,” said Defense Department spokesperson Heather Babb in a Bloomberg News story about the report. Recent storm damage to Air Force bases Tyndall in… Read More »Centre Climate: How is national security affected by climate change?

By Dick Jones Our public discourse encourages us to believe that we live in a world of stark binary choices. Red state-blue state, liberal-conservative, capitalist-socialist. Nuance is so 20th century. That’s the case with the attention given to the Green New Deal, the plan championed by New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts senator Ed Markey. While its centerpiece is a stimulus program with incentives to move the United States to 100% renewable energy by 2030, the Green New Deal also contains an “economic bill of rights”… Read More »Climate watch: It’s not the Green New Deal or nothing at all

By Dick Jones This Earth Day, lawmakers should support an end to ‘socialized soot’ When former South Carolina Republican Congressman Bob Inglis was in State College in February to speak at Penn State’s “Sustainability Showcase,” he called for an end to “socialized soot.” The fossil-fuel industry gets a free pass on the health, environmental and national defense costs of its products. While profits are safely privatized, many of the industry’s costs are socialized — borne by society at large. Inglis, who for 12 years represented… Read More »Earth Day Op Ed