Dear Editor,
Vermont is not preparing fast enough for its changing climate, though there are signals from abnormal precipitation patterns, warmer summers and invasives.
When is it “too late” for a community that will never return? Perhaps communities have a choice to declare floodplains unsafe for development aside from agriculture and timbering.
Reading accounts of this horrific flood in Texas taking so many children with it, I learned of the several official discussions about installing a flood warning system. It was deemed too expensive.
Vermont’s government will need to apply measures to adapt to this wetter, warmer future.
I call out the clean heat standard advocates and lobbyists to give time and attention to redesigning where and how we live.
We have time and money to enforce the Global Warming Solutions Act to lower fossil fuel emissions by a few million tons in a world that emits 35 billion.
And, we have time and money to prepare our children and families to adapt to those changes — including more efficient use of energy and agriculture designed to thrive in those changes.
Housing, education and health care will also succumb to those changes and there is time to adapt.
John McCormick
Bristol
