To the editor:

Ah, the daily news. The president finally admits that global warming is real! The ice caps are melting, and the polar bears dying. The Colorado River and its reservoirs are drying up. There goes Las Vegas! Bangkok (and 13 of the 20 largest cities in the world) is at risk of slipping below the rising oceans in the coming decades while California burns today. There go home insurance rates! Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have risen 35 percent since 1990, much faster than predicted, which further increases the greenhouse effect in a self-perpetuating cycle, and the only thing preventing western Kansas from becoming a desert is the Ogalala Aquifer, which is being depleted 100 times faster than it is being replenished.

Given all this, it seems strange that the only thing Kansas legislative leaders can get themselves worked up about is the denial of a permit to build two more anachronistic coal-burning power plants to belch another 11 million tons of CO2 (equivalent to the emissions of 1.2 million cars) into the air every year, thus turning up the cooker another notch.

For what? A couple of hundred permanent jobs and a few dollars off the electric bill every month!

The true cost of those savings would be paid by our grandchildren who would (will?) live in a much more expensive, less pleasant and more hostile environment than we do.

Maybe the legislative leaders don’t have grandchildren. Or maybe they just don’t care about them. I do. Wake up, people!

Steven Bruner

Lawrence