The following letter was also submitted to Mercer Island City Councilmember Wendy Weiker:

Ms. Weiker et al,

Your name came up during a meeting of the Washington Women for Climate Action Now.

It was the best part of the meeting for me. It signified there is an awareness that without Puget Sound Energy and the energy industry support, this effort nationwide is not likely to succeed.

I have been actively involved with this since the conversation about Initiative 732 began. It has been a disappointing effort. Persons of influence on Mercer Island don’t seem to care enough to talk about it.

Climate change and global warming together pose an existential threat to the planet. It is an insidious threat. It is so because we may have already crossed the tipping point, and few people seem to understand.

The reality is that we need a Marshall Plan-effort this very minute.

We need all hands on deck now. Without the support of the fossil fuel industry, it cannot happen. That’s the thinking of well known and international authorities James Hansen, Michael Oppenheimer, Kevin Anderson and Wally Broecker.

Finally, there are the words of American economist Paul Craig Roberts.

“If it turns out that global warming and ocean acidification are consequences of capitalism’s carbon-based energy system, the entire world could end up dead from the external costs of capitalism.”

Yes, I am preaching to the choir, which needs to grow exponentially. Climate change and global warming will outlast all the terrorists.

Mother Nature will outlast climate change — over a few hundred or thousand years. The price will be enormous and the cost incalculable.

Cy Baumgartner

Mercer Island