RICHARD MORRIS

Lock Haven

Unlike Merle Harnish (letter to the editor “Climate change,” April 18) I was actually in the room for the presentation to the Clinton County commissioners on climate change, and I can assure him that it was full of “accurate, scientific observation” and noticeably free of “politically driven reports and publications”. Moreover, the simple message of the presentation was that part of the solution to this world-wide situation lies in a host of local initiatives. In particular the aim was to focus the Commissioners’ attention on the newly adopted Pennsylvania C-PACE program (Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy) which offers innovative ways of financing renewable energy projects in counties that adopt it. As it stands it is complicated and has too many moving parts, but even so there is no sensible argument for not adopting it in principle, and I hope and believe that our leaders will do so.

Consider this scenario. In order to get my washing machine to work, I can wait for people to dig up coal or gas from out of the ground and truck or pipe it to a power station, where more people will set fire to it in order to produce sufficient energy to generate electric power to feed into a grid so that eventually it will reach my washer. Alternatively, I can get it to go by putting solar panels on my roof. You choose.

We do not need to count the parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, or calculate how many angels can balance on the point of a pin, to recognize the economic and social benefits of promoting renewable energy sources.

Mr. Harnish bolsters his argument with the thoughts of a couple of geriatric earth scientists. Professor Plimer (not Palmer) is roughly the same age as me, and probably, therefore, like me, old, grumpy and resistant to new ideas. But in the ten years that have passed since he made his quoted remark, even he may have noticed that the citizens of Miami now stand ankle deep in water at every high tide and pray for someone to give them “complete and accurate information” that their feet are not wet.