“Don Quixote” is a fun read. Having Don Quixote in the White House is not the same. Tilting at the windmills of the fossil fuels industry may jeopardize the entire planet. The imminent threat to the planet is not a nuclear North Korea. It is climate change, and it is insidious because it but seems invisible.

A couple weeks back, a dozen Mercer Island residents visited their state senators and representatives in Olympia. Their intention was to advocate for a carbon tax. Carbon emissions are the cause of climate change and thus the premier threat to the planet.

While visiting Olympia and advocating for a carbon tax made us feel better for our effort, everyone knows the threat of climate change is such that it needs national and international attention.

We are running out of time, with just a few decades left to preserve civilization. Yes, solar, wind, batteries, and energy efficiency are plummeting in cost, but not fast enough to prevent planetary catastrophe.

The science is clear. We must leave the vast majority of the remaining reserves of oil, coal and gas unburned and underground. Those reserves, however, are the foundation of the values of the richest and most powerful companies in history, and they have made it clear that they plan to keep burning them, and those who disagree are Quixotic.

Civilization does not have to end that way. We can prevent it. We can use the same method to save ourselves as we did to rescue ourselves in the financial crisis of 2008. The U.S. pumped vast sums of money into the banks, preventing wide scale bankruptcy and full scale depression.

Now is the time for the government to undertake a massive buyout of the fossil fuel industry, taking controlling ownership. That will not occur during this administration. The next administration will not regard it as Quixotic.

C F Baumgartner

Mercer Island