Lawrence Journal-World opinion section

To the editor:

We came to America as emigrants, fed up with hierarchy and distrust of those who set themselves up as authorities. If we’re told to think in a certain way, there is a backlash. Science presents us with a time-delayed, abstract and often statistical picture of the risks of global warming that make it difficult to achieve a sense of urgency.

Deep down, I think we know that decades of deregulated capitalism have led to environmental damage on a scale that threatens the very prosperity it is meant to generate. For the last 30 years, the ideology of the unfettered marketplace has so dominated politics that most of us can scarcely imagine an alternative way of organizing our affairs. Individuals who try are dismissed as being out of touch or socialists.

Blind faith in the marketplace leads people to believe they are free to consume limitless fossil fuels and, if the government acts to restrict them, it is restricting freedom. If we would push Congress for it, a carbon fee and dividend could address the issue.

Have we become a shortsighted people so intent on comfort that we just ignore the problem?  The right to exist on a planet that is sustainable is more fundamental than the right to consume. Edmund Burke saw society and civilization as a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born. Our descendants, however skilled, will not be able to cope with the consequences of climate change.