“Steroids are to baseball players what global warming is to extreme weather,” urges Katherine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech. Striking out is not an option, and yet skeptics of climate change abound amongst our politicians, most notably as of late, Republican senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who prevailed in the Maine Republican Caucuses. In an interview with NPR Morning Edition in December 2015, Cruz asserted that climate change was a conspiracy promoted by liberals who want to impose “massive government control over the economy, the energy sector and every aspect of our lives.” As a young person, I am shocked at his statement. I have seen the impacts of climate change first-hand, and am very concerned that things will continue to get worse for my generation and generations after me. According to “The Lancet,” a well-established medical journal, global warming is very likely to be the “biggest global health threat of the 21st century,” exacerbating the spread of infectious diseases, heat-related illnesses, allergies, and of course, the psychological and physiological damage of extreme weather events.

Luckily, we have the start of a solution in the U.S. Clean Power Plan, the most comprehensive and thoughtful legislation in U.S. history aimed at cutting carbon emissions. While Cruz slams the plan, Maine’s very own Republican Senator Susan Collins has stood with Maine people and voted in support of the Plan. Moreover, she is one of few GOP senators to support President Obama’s nominees for a Supreme Court Justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia, as well as to fortify the Clean Power Plan. And for those reasons, I thank her. Mainers: fighting climate change isn’t just preemptive, it is reactionary. Global warming is here. Elect politicians who don’t deny the facts. Now is the time to act.

Lily Brinker,

Portland