To the Editor:
Re “In Rocky Day, Tillerson Sets His Own Path” (front page, Jan. 12): Of all Donald Trump’s nominees, Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Rick Perry, the Energy Department, and Rex Tillerson, the State Department, are the most alarming.
Mr. Pruitt and Mr. Perry have denied that human-caused climate change exists. Mr. Tillerson, while publicly acknowledging that it does, nevertheless continued, while chief executive of Exxon Mobil, to fund scientists, members of Congress and organizations spreading climate change disinformation.
If confirmed and if they ignore the climate crisis, what will they say to those who lose their infants and children (among the most vulnerable) during the next extreme heat wave? Heat waves now kill on average over 600 Americans each year, a figure expected to reach 11,000 by 2030 because of climate change.
And how will they face families of the thousands who may die during the next catastrophic hurricane like Katrina? There is strong scientific evidence that hurricanes are becoming increasingly deadly with ocean warming.
It is dangerously ignorant to believe we have a choice whether or not we combat climate change. If we do not, the lives of Mr. Trump’s, Mr. Pruitt’s, Mr. Perry’s and Mr. Tillerson’s descendants will be just as imperiled, and their worlds just as devastated and impoverished, as mine will.
ERIC CHIVIAN
Boston
The writer, a physician, is the founder and former director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard.
Note from KBJ: This man, who is not a scientist (much less a "climate" scientist), continues to spread a false alarm about global warming, which anyone with a brain can see is a massive hoax perpetrated by progressive ideologues and self-interested "scientists." (The classes are not disjoint.) Thank God we have a new administration that has not been taken in by this hoax. By the way, have you seen any argument by any global-warming alarmist to the effect that global warming is on balance a bad thing? I have not. Sentient life will be significantly better off with a warmer globe. Keep those engines running!
