We’ll adapt?

To the editor:

Evidence of global warming and climate change in Kansas and surrounding states was documented in several recent Journal-World articles. Temperatures reached 109 to 115 degrees in parts of western Kansas while wildfires blazed over farmland in central, north-central, and northwestern Kansas. Colorado wildfires have raged out of control and forced evacuations of many homes, and over 1,000 record temperatures were set in a single week. Rather impressive for this early in the year, and the current weather system shows no sign of rapid improvement.

We can all hope that the rest of summer will provide rain and cooler temperatures, but the long-term climate outlook is likely to worsen in the years and decades to come. What will become of America’s breadbasket if these conditions persist? If the Ogallala aquifer should no longer be capable of sustaining irrigation in the high plains and dry-land farming becomes problematic, our abundant food supply may not be as reliable as we have all thought. As sea levels rise more rapidly on the East Coast and other evidence of global warming increases, the fossil fuel industry continues its head-in-the-sand approach.

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson says “society will be able to adapt.” This is the same kind of subterfuge that the tobacco industry used to assure us that cigarettes were safe until irrefutable evidence was finally obtained. My concern is that by time irrefutable evidence is accepted by Mr. Tillerson, life on this planet will no longer exist as we have known it.