Regarding the $808,000 for the region’s climate resilience planning, I’m really happy that western Massachusetts towns are taking climate change seriously enough that they are looking to nature-based solutions to a hotter Earth and its consequences for our region [“$808K boosts region’s climate resiliency planning,” Recorder, Sept. 6]. Good for them. Ten years ago that would have been brushed off as crazy. So now that we’ve established that climate change is really happening, can we please take it seriously and stop burning fossil fuels? No amount of mitigation is going to help if we keep feeding the cause. The wheels are actively coming off of our environment. Look what happened to us this summer! How much more of that can we really take?

It may seem outlandish that little towns in rural Massachusetts could solve such a huge problem, much less one that’s currently being pumped as hard by China as by our own nation. But if we don’t try, why bother with mitigation? It is time for radical changes in how we use energy. It is time for us to throw aside the narcotic ease of oil and gas and declare that yes, we do want to live — and live well! What is stopping us from building windmills across our mountains and solar panels on every skyward-facing surface? What is stopping us aside from lack of imagination and baldfaced anti-green campaigns by oil interests that are looking increasingly macabre? Obviously, the money is out there. Let’s use it to work the problem.

Andrew Gooding-Call

Northampton