Letters: Climate change denial affects future generations; Enough with the hypocrisy

Climate change denial affects future generations

The most important reason your grandchildren may not live to maturity is the huge change in climate caused by human activity.

The layer of air above earth is so badly polluted by our way of life that sunlight is trapped after hitting the earth and cannot bounce back into space as easily as before. This results in rising temperatures at a rate not seen in thousands of years and extreme weather, from flooding to drought to intensified storms.

The U.S. has historically been the biggest contributor to this fundamental threat to our existence and on a per-person basis still is.

What is the Republican response to this? No response at all. No response or concern for the very possible end of human life. No sense of emergency, even as California burns, Washington state drowns, Southern Florida begins going under water and much of the world already suffers much more than we do.

The abject ignorance and denial coming from the Republican Party on this issue threatens our way of life — and our grandchildren’s very lives. We must make this party take responsibility for the crisis that is imperiling their constituents! Climate change is not a far-off problem of the future. It is happening right now — and every second we allow Republicans to waste by denying climate action is time we steal from future generations.

Enough with the hypocrisy

Haven’t we heard enough of the hypocrisy from Senator Corman, Legislator Benninghoff, and Congresspersons Thompson and Keller? They claim that vaccine and mask mandates are an unconstitutional imposition upon their freedom. Really? What about speed limits, stop signs, and drunk driving laws? What about dress codes in schools, existing mandated school and employment health checks for drug impairment and for vaccines? They are all government imposed mandates to protect people from each others behavior and situations. Should we get rid of those mandates? The four pseudo representatives claim to be protecting freedom. Freedom to do what? Freedom to spread disease to our neighbors; freedom to overwhelm our health care system, freedom to raise the national death toll to more than one million? We live in free country, but I can’t run a stop sign — I might injure or kill someone, let alone myself. So are our four local pseudo representatives now going to advocate that we remove stop signs, traffic lights, speed limits, and school dress codes? Really? Let’s be consistent Messrs. Keller, Thompson, Corman, and Benninghoff. I for one am tired of dealing with a pandemic that you through your hypocritical pandering are prolonging. For once it would be nice to have leaders in office rather than panderers.

Veto on gun bill warranted

I am so glad that Governor Wolf vetoed the recent gun law that Republicans tried to pass. All we need is more “nut cases” out and about carrying guns in public and doing so legally. It is bad enough with the political climate and the fate of one person or another just because of who they voted for or what political party they may be associated with. If people want to carry a weapon they should pass a mental exam and get a week of intense lessons about the laws and make sure they can handle the weapon they intend to carry. Far too may people are “loose cannons.” They get mad over something small and all of a sudden have a gun and will use it to settle a small problem. Why not teach people to talk to one another and reconcile the problem? All carrying a gun does is give a person that was otherwise too cowardly to talk to the other person about a disagreement the capability to get their payback they otherwise would not have. Only cowards need to have a gun by their sides at all times to feel safe.