To the Editor:

            The number of times I have heard, “Well, it’s your generation’s problem now” whenever I discuss climate change is almost as high as the number of people who would be affected by rising sea levels. The website “Gallup” publishes that fifty-six percent of persons older than fifty-five are worried about global warming compared to the seventy percent of persons aged seventeen to thirty-four. This thought process could cripple the next generations’ ability to change anything. 

            The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that we would have to cut carbon emissions by forty-five percent by 2030 to keep global temperatures from rising above one point five degrees Celsius. Although that seems far away, that’s only twelve years. That figure is not enough time for Generation Z, a group of current teens and early twenty-somethings, to make the mass international policy changes needed to reduce these emissions. 

            These carbon-limiting policies need to be put into motion now, not by the time the next generation takes over the government. Instead of creating these policies, the current U.S. government has been repealing them, which has led to emission increases. The older generations that make up the majority of voters should start now to learn the candidates for the 2020 election’s plans for reducing the U.S.’s emissions. To put another climate change doubter into the highest position of leadership of this country would be sealing the fate of all generations to come.

            Sincerely,

Carey McCollester, a concerned Gen Zer and student in the Tri-Town

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