Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

To the Editor:
Recognition of the need to address climate change is not new to the US government. Just last year, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence stated in their Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community that “Climate hazards such as extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea-level rise, soil degradation, and acidifying oceans are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security.”
Recognizing this national and global threat, it’s not surprising that the Biden Administration recently released a set of Executive Orders addressing climate change.  What’s most distressing about these orders is that they are not part of a coordinated bipartisan national approach to this very real threat.
We need our elected officials to stop their knee-jerk Tweets, such as our Senator Blackburn’s recent Tweet that Biden’s plans will make gasoline be $5 per gallon (which will probably happen someday, regardless of Biden’s plans!). We need our congressional leaders to recognize that to protect the strength of this country for our children, we have to bring real solutions to the table, and addressing the complexities of climate change will need the use of many partial solutions.
To Senator Blackburn and all others in Congress, rather than just knocking ideas from the opposing party, try presenting real solutions and then look for compromises to allow our nation to actually move forward in tackling climate threats. That’s called being a real statesman, rather than a squabbling politician!
 
D. McCoy
Elizabethton