President Obama’s recent trip to Alaska shines an encouraging light on the need for the country to continue making strides to address climate change. I’m pleased he made a bold plan to deal with global warming. I totally agree.
The impacts are already dramatic in Alaska, but here in Colorado it’s happening, too. We are seeing a growing trend of reduced snowpack and we’ve just experienced yet another of the hottest summers on record and 14 of the last 15 years have been the hottest on record.
Thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, Colorado is on the way to reducing our global warming emissions as is the whole nation. That said, Shell Oil’s plan to drill in the Arctic also caught my attention.
What a terrible idea. The Arctic is not a place where a spill will be easy to handle. The pristine ocean and rare wildlife are too sensitive to be threatened by an accident. We need to drill less, not more. And that includes an effort in the U.S. Senate to lift our decades-old ban on exporting crude oil.
I am strongly opposed to lifting that ban. It will lead to more global warming pollution along with more drilling, more spilling, more transporting oil across the nation. Our senators, Michael Bennet and Corey Gardner, need to oppose lifting the ban on crude oil. We need less damage to our environment, not more.
Riley Flickner
Durango
