Decisive action on climate change needed

 A friend of mine, a farmer and county board member north of here, told me the weather has become his enemy. Between heavy rains that regularly carve gullies into his fields, brutal winds that flatten his crops making them impossible to harvest, rain instead of snow in the winter that's forcing him to replant alfalfa and build an expensive barn to raise his calves in, and fields too wet to plant — this year he left 85 acres unseeded — he's struggling. He doesn't understand why we don't do something about our climate. He knows firsthand that it's changing, and says his best crop this year will be gray hair.

Southeast Texas has turned into a lake the size of Lake Michigan. Parts of Asia are flooded, so is Western Africa and these are just the latest. Scientists have been telling us for years that as the oceans and air heat up we're going to get a lot more rain, and they're right.

Ice that's been around practically forever at the poles and in the form of glaciers is melting fast. The rate of sea level rise has tripled since 1990. Coastal folks are starting to give up and move inland. The coming mass migration away from the world's coasts will cause wars, says our military.

Weary of political argument in the face of growing climate disaster? Isn't it time to tell Congressman Sean Duffy, Senators Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson and President Trump to take decisive action on climate change?

Dan Barth

Mosinee