Find new ways to conserve water
Given the severe water crisis we face in California, is it possible to mandate that new construction and remodels be required to install graywater systems and to provide incentives for all property owners to install them?
Keeping buckets in your shower and sinks is a very inefficient way to water your landscape.
This crisis will not go away, even if we do have more rain next winter. Global warming is a fact of life now. Let’s find as many ways to conserve water now!
Marcia White
Los Altos
Fossil fuel industry causing climate crisis
As someone who follows local and national news reports, I must tell you I am worried about the recent extreme heat and wildfires raging across the country. I feel for people who lose their lives and livelihoods to extreme weather, and I’m scared that it’s only a matter of time until it directly hits me and my community.
Seeing headlines in local news outlets covering these climate disasters made me realize that most news stories show no connection between them and their main cause: fossil fuels. This is dangerous, because many people will continue to refuse to see that longer, hotter and deadlier summers are caused and perpetuated by the disastrous coal, oil and gas projects – and the fossil fuel industry.
The science is clear – the longer we allow coal, oil and gas companies to dig and burn, the worse the impacts of the climate crisis will be. With every fraction of a degree of warming, we’ll see and suffer more extreme heat, droughts, floods, wildfires and hurricanes. But the fossil fuel industry continues to ignore these alerts and undermine our chances for a safer future, and CO2 emissions keep rising. We all know this is causing global heating, and resulting in extreme weather events, yet they keep digging, burning and profiting, with zero accountability.
Local, regional and national media have an important role to play – and a moral obligation to tell the whole truth. It’s time to make one thing about extreme weather very clear: It’s not a “crisis” that just happens to us – it’s a crime, and the fossil fuel industry is to blame. And saying it once isn’t enough. Media has an important job to do to turn the tide of public opinion, and help the world avoid the worst of the climate impacts.
Please tell the real story about the climate crisis.
Lisa Melendy
Redwood City
