On the heels of the United Nations global warming report issued earlier this week, Solaflect founder Bill Bender submitted a letter to the editors of several local newspapers around Vermont and New Hampshire, which should be in newsprint shortly. Given the urgency of the topic, and on the chance newsprint doesn’t make it across your doorstep, we’ve shared a copy of his letter below:

“The latest international climate change report makes it clear that three-quarters of human-caused global warming has occurred in my lifetime. We are just starting to see the impacts that have been predicted for decades, including more wildfires, extreme flooding, more intense storms, melting glaciers, migrating viruses, and mass human migration caused by depleted livelihoods.  In the past decade, the earth surpassed average temperatures seen any time since the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago. In general, land warms more than oceans, and winters warm more than summers. As a result, New England winters are one of the most affected parts of the mainland U.S. Average winter temperatures are approximately 5 degrees warmer in a bit more than a century, and on current trends, the increase will be much more this century. In the first two decades of my life, there were only 5 winter days when the top of Vermont’s Mt. Mansfield stayed above freezing all day. In the last two decades, there have been 29 such days, nearly a six-fold increase. This is only one of millions of data points that indicate how the earth is warming.” 

The recent report indicates that we are rapidly approaching the last decade in which we can head off catastrophic impacts for our children. The $5 trillion dollar fossil fuel industry is trying its best to muddy the waters by spreading false information.  

Nonetheless there is hope; the U.S. has reduced carbon emissions over the past decade to 1992 levels despite a much larger economy, and there are thousands of solar homes in VT and NH. New England should be a global leader in the switch to a cleaner economy, but we are lagging far behind the speed necessary for this transition. 

For the sake of our children, please support a dramatically faster transition to clean and renewable energy sources, both personally in your home and business, and politically at the ballot box.”