Two articles in the Sept. 13 paper spoke to the world’s greatest threat besides politics: the overwhelming use of fossil fuels. Reed Hundt’s Friday Opinion essay, “Firms need to cooperate to fight climate change,” favored allowing automakers to cooperate on increasing fuel efficiency, a laudable goal, but with limited benefit. Of greater impact is the Trump administration’s insanity in seeking to open up the entire coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration [“Interior Dept. seeks to lease all of coastal plain,” news]. The last thing our children and grandchildren need is more drilling, more roads in wilderness area, more ships and pipelines bringing fossil fuel to countries that already use too much, and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, where it will remain for hundreds of years.

Safer and far less dangerous are the third- and fourth-generation nuclear power plants that are already available to provide clean power with far less potential damage to the environment. Sweden, Finland and France have used nuclear power to become largely electric. We can, too, but it will take an administration that recognizes scientific and engineering expertise and that is not beholden to coal, oil and gas interests. 

Robert Gerwin, Bethesda

In recent years, I feel I’ve been living in the surreal world of a Salvador Dalí painting — especially his famous melting watches. Time to address climate change has been melting between our fingers, with potentially existential consequences of this challenge if not addressed in meaningful ways.

The Sept. 14 front-page article “Poll: Climate fears growing” provided a glimmer of hope that the critical first steps in mitigating or adapting to the increasing havoc of climate change — public acknowledgment of the threat and a call to arms — are being taken. Earlier clarion calls, including the report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and nations’ anemic voluntary targets as part of the Paris climate accord, registered too faintly. There was a dispiriting shrug. It was someone else’s problem. Meanwhile, temperatures rise, sea levels rise, and violent weather events rise.

That “a strong majority of Americans — about 8 in 10 — say that human activity is fueling climate change” lays down a new marker for broad recognition of calamitous outcomes of human inertia on this matter and could spur creative thinking around plausible remedies. Just maybe we can indeed head off Earth’s sixth mass extinction.

Keith Tidman, Bethesda

It is most curious that the majority surveyed in the United States are taking climate change seriously, yet the solution is generally to add $2 or $10 a month to our electric bill or to tax corporations that burn fossil fuels. I do not see any effort to reduce our personal use by sacrificing our fine vehicles, our travel, comforts and recreation. We seem to view any curtailment of our use as individuals as too minor to be worthy of the effort; besides, we have the money. So far, the solution seems to be, let the other guy make the sacrifice.

I suspect most of us could easily reduce our consumption by reducing some of our comforts and our waste. Meanwhile, we dump tons of methane into the atmosphere while harvesting oil and gas because it is not cost-effective to capture it. We burn wood or gas in our outdoor fireplaces while drinking warm wine to enjoy ourselves. The pickups seem to get bigger and more luxurious.

I assume at some point we will analyze the issues, the ethics and the finances and take action, but we’re not quite there yet.

Mike Thompson, Hollywood