Where have all the climate change deniers gone?

In 2013, I unwittingly sparked a journalistic controversy when, in a short article on counterfactual letters to the editor, I mentioned that denying the existence of evidence of climate change was an example of the kind of factual inaccuracies I try to keep off the page. A follow-up explaining my thought as a publisher about it sparked more controversy. In many circles at the time, denial of climate change was seen as a dominant opinion sometimes worthy of printing.

Today, with the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warning that the window of decarbonization of humanity is closing rapidly, there is hardly any disagreement between our correspondents on the reality of global warming. Even politicians known for their previous rhetoric and actions on climate change are now express agreement with scienceif not, the need for society to do a lot to solve the problem.

Since the IPCC report was released on Monday, our readers have expressed everything from desperation to resolve to tackle climate change. Letters denying science keep pouring in, but it’s not like 2013 at all.

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For the publisher: The Times’ August 9 editorial on the UN climate report focuses on world leaders and their policies. Corn as one reader wrote in response to a previous editorial on President Biden’s electric vehicle push, “Industrial policy is a mad race … Taste, income, and production costs determine what is bought and sold.”

If so, let’s change our tastes, our revenues and our production costs.

As consumers, we can stop buying things we don’t need. As manufacturers, we can choose not to be overcompensated. We can use the savings in executive salaries to reduce production costs and increase the incomes of frontline workers, who could then afford to buy the products they need. We can adopt a simpler way of life that weighs less on the planet.

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None of this requires regulation or government policy. What you need to do is look around and ask yourself, if it’s stuff or money, do I need all of this?

Mary Bomba, Los Angeles

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For the publisher: Even as the pages of The Times fill with scientific warnings about how quickly we must act to avert the worst of global warming, a Bloomberg article on your Business Pages tells us that U.S. carbon emissions will increase this year. The economy is picking up steam and the use of fossil fuels is increasing.

The market prices of coal, oil and natural gas in no way reflect the catastrophic effects they are having on our planet. This is why “business as usual” cannot continue. The imposition of a rapidly increasing carbon tax is essential to make fossil fuels increasingly less economically attractive. This in turn will speed up the adoption of alternatives.

Exploration for new fossil fuels should cease now. Clean energy infrastructure must be put on a war footing. Conservation, reforestation and many other solutions require their implementation. And the poor nations must be helped by the rich.

It is high time the world, led by the United States, accepts that we are all in the same boat that will sink if we do not get serious.

Grace Bertalot, Anaheim

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For the publisher: I do not accept the idea that our response to climate change will fail like it did with the pandemic.

Reducing greenhouse gases does not rely on microeconomic decisions made by individuals. Rather, it depends on the macro-policies put in place by the government. Putting a substantial price on carbon at its source is the best way to have a significant impact on global temperatures.

To inspire us, we can go back to the 1980s. It was then that the world became aware of the widening of the hole in the ozone layer of the atmosphere, created by the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere. aerosol products, refrigeration and air conditioning.

Although initially skeptical of the need for government intervention, President Reagan listened to the science and ultimately signed the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a global treaty to phase out CFCs. Reagan realized that the government needed to respond quickly to this emergency and, therefore, encourage the production of CFC-free products.

Likewise, individuals alone cannot solve the problem of climate change. Our environmental history will not echo our COVID-19 tragedy if the government does what it is supposed to do: act in a big way to solve the big problems.

Sarah Freifeld, Valencia

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For the publisher: Our beautiful and wonderful planet will undoubtedly regenerate and continue with or without humans. What is really threatened or may need to be saved right now is humanity.

Maybe natural selection is already playing out. When the human animal does nothing to protect its young by refusing vaccination, consumes products it does not need, takes a plane and goes on a cruise and burns fossil fuels while the very life systems that do it argue are contaminated and altered by its activities, what else do we have to conclude?

It would have been nice if humans had been able to heed the red flag of COVID-19. It is more than sad that we are taking so many non-human animals and plants with us in the mass extinction crisis that is happening right now.

But there is hope. Natural bats last.

Gina Ortiz, Claremont

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For the publisher: In 1968 I went to the movies and watched a blockbuster science fiction movie. The shocking ending, which we had destroyed our planet, brought the character played by Charlton Heston to his knees in horror.

Today my horror is that “Planet of the Apes” was not necessarily science fiction.

Shelby Popham, Los Angeles

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.