For more than 150 years we have been building our cultures on the burning of fossil fuels. We have been using coal, oil and natural gas for heating our homes and buildings, for producing electricity, for developing plastics and medicines and for the production of tens of thousands of products. We are at the point where we appear unable to do without the use of fossil fuels. We have been burning them because they have been abundant, inexpensive and seemingly unlimited in supply.

Scientists have been telling us for many years that there will be prices to pay for our reliance on oil, coal and natural gas, on which we have built an enormously successful civilization. But nobody has taken the scientists seriously enough to take truly meaningful actions. Now we are well into paying that price with the heating of the atmosphere and all the weather events that have followed.

The half-hearted efforts by various governments will not undo 150 years of nonstop extraction from the ground and the burning of enormous amounts of these fossil fuels. What is necessary to attempt to reverse our dependence on fossil fuels and the damage done to our environment? We need a complete and severe modification of our economic systems, our financial systems, our agricultural systems and our transportation systems. We must make these monumental changes if we want to accomplish the goal of saving most life on our planet. Anything short of that will be blowing in the wind.

Len Frenkel
South Portland

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