In spite of all of the shenanigans emanating from Washington, D.C., I have lost count of the number of consecutive days where the lead story on the nightly news is a climate-related disaster killing people. Hundreds in Nepal; now someone lost from a flash flood in the Grand Canyon.

Climate change is insidious and universal. Mother Nature always bats last; and she can strike anywhere on the planet.

While humans have shaped the earth over the last several thousand years, we are now helping to ruin our quality of life through the belching of millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere everyday.

The planet is fighting back with floods and fires and earthquakes and drought.

And because of melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica and thawing permafrost in the Arctic, and Nepal, we can expect conditions to only get worse.

2026 will probably be the hottest year on record; but it will also be the coolest year we’ll experience as we move to 2027 and beyond.

How many have to die before we finally make those who are producing the greenhouse gases pay for the damage? We simply must find a way to make them stop.

Bruce Cooper,

Cranberry Township