CO CCL LTE of the month: Jim Dimmick’s LTE in the Boulder Daily Camera
Jim Dimmick reminds readers that the term “global warming” doesn’t accurately describe our situation. Yes, the climate is warming but that warming has created an instability in the atmosphere that is more accurately described as climate chaos. The recent polar vortex event in Texas is a case in point. Urgent action is needed, and carbon pricing is one of the most effective answers.
Jim Dimmick: Climate change — Remedy is carbon pricing
As the snow starts falling for our major March snow storm, I am reminded of a recent Zoom meeting where someone started talking about global warming. I spontaneously responded that wasn’t the right term to use. Climate change or climate chaos was better.
Even though the planet is warming, that’s not how many people experience the impacts of that warming. Humanity’s burning of fossil fuels has disturbed the relative stability of the climate that humans have had for the last 10,000 years. And that instability led to changes in the jet stream that yielded a polar vortex in Texas recently. Texans didn’t experience warming, they’d experienced a chaotic climate.
If we don’t take some actions soon that chaos will become worse. The reliable Gulf Stream ocean current that warms Northern Europe will become unreliable. The so-called “500 year flood” that hit Boulder in 2013 will likely happen again this century.
What can we do to stop the escalation of this climate chaos? Carbon pricing is one of the most effective ways to slow down and stop climate chaos. And the revenue from a price on carbon can be returned to those that are most impacted by the higher cost of fossil fuels.
Please contact Sen. Bennet, Sen. Hickenlooper and Rep. Neguse and ask them to pass a carbon pricing bill through Congress this year. Do this for your grand-children and all future generations.
Jim Dimmick