I am responding to the Washington Post story “Flying is a mess this summer,” which I read in the July 6 Press Herald.

Yes, it is, and the reasons given – booking with time to spare, taking a direct flight, not checking a bag, etc. are all fine – for normal times. Sadly, we are not in normal times. The pandemic is, thankfully, on the wane, but climate change is not only still with us, it is gaining momentum.

Flying represents about 12 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions for transportation. We no longer have the luxury of flying whenever and wherever we choose. Until green fuels are available, we must cut back drastically, or eliminate it altogether.

I watched a PBS Frontline program last night about the “Camp Fire” that destroyed the city of Paradise, California. The city had planned well, but its officials had not planned for a climate change induced fire, a fire with monstrous heat and wind and that was everywhere at once and gave them barely time to help most residents escape, but not to actually fight the fire.

In Maine we have not yet experienced such a catastrophic impact, but each and every citizen has to plan for what clearly lies ahead with dramatic, across-the-board transformations of our lifestyles before 2035, including driving electric cars, heating our homes with heat pumps, greatly reducing meat in our diets, and recycling food wastes. We can not let the earth’s temperature rise more than 1. 5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels without risking even worse catastrophic events.

Join me, please, for our grand children.

Joe Hardy
Wells