To the editor:
Last Tuesday, I attended a debate between candidates for the 3rd Berkshire District state representative seat. Though I appreciated learning about their positions, I was disappointed that our current climate catastrophe was not discussed, given the utter devastation caused by the one-two punch of Hurricane Helene in Ashevile, N.C., and Hurricane Milton in Florida. We shouldn’t kid ourselves that Berkshire County will be immune from either the cost of future climate-related events or the reality of paying for current ones.
Estimates regarding private insurance companies’ payouts for hurricane Helene’s damage alone range from $10 billion to $17 billion—a cost that will surely be passed on to all property insurance holders—even those in non-impacted areas. Similarly, FEMA and other government agencies will be spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to mitigate the damage caused by climate-related storms this year, siphoning off funds needed in places like Berkshire County to replace aging roads and bridges.
Given this inevitability, I had hoped to hear our candidates acknowledge the impact of climate change and provide some hopeful examples of our district’s transition to clean energy. What are our plans to provide electric charging stations? How quickly can we electrify our school buses?
Where is the assurance that future building projects in our 18 towns will be powered by clean-energy alternatives?
How will residents and businesses be encouraged to pursue clean-energy benefits provided in President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act?
Yes, we heard their commitment to battle GE’s toxic legacy, but we also heard both candidates suggest loosening regulations to ease housing woes—despite North Carolina’s weakened building regulations being a factor in exacerbating the property destruction there.
We know that our planet and its oceans are overheating and that fossil fuels remain the number one contributor to the catastrophic warming that is occurring. We also know that Berkshire County needs to increase housing and attract businesses to stop the exodus of our young people. What we didn’t hear were specific plans for the 3rd Berkshire District’s future in the face of the ongoing threat of climate change.
In order to meet this existential threat, we need legislators who will promote and enact solutions. We need a state legislature that finally passes a climate bill. We need a congressman who is willing to join his state delegation in signing the Green New Deal—and we need to elect a state representative who will heed that call.
Michele Marantz
Dalton
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