Dear President-elect Trump

Michael Muller, Dec 5, 2016. An open letter, published in the Montague Reporter

Dear President-elect Trump,

I implore you to take a serious look into what's been happening around our world.

Please call the Mayor of Miami and talk to him about the $400 Million he his spending on pumps and storm walls to protect his city from rising seas. Look at the footage of the water coming up the streets every day where it never used to. They found an octopus washed up inside a parking garage. No joke.

Call NOAA, our National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which was created by President Nixon. Ask them about the receding ice shelves. They have records going back two hundred years. All that ice is now water, in the ocean, raising the sea levels. Ask NASA how that happened. NASA has the data. Remember Miami. It's happening.

Please believe the hundreds and hundreds of climate scientists and organizations all around the world, instead of the paid shills of the oil industry, both in the media and our congress. Follow the money. The trail is there. You know where it's coming from, and why.

And, beyond the rising seas, think about air pollution. Do you remember NYC during the summers of 1970's? What did we do then?

Fact: even in 2013, eight times as many New Yorkers died from air pollution-related health issues as from murder. We still have work to do.

Talk to Arnold Schwartzennegger about what he did in California. Ask him about how the economy also improved.

The next generation of this country is watching you. How do you want to be remembered? As the president who saw what was happening around us and did the right thing before real disaster struck?... or as the president who did nothing or made things worse just to help line the pockets of oil executives while our coastal cities sank.

Be the president who reinvigorated the American economy by making us the undisputed global leader in renewable energy technology, while also cleaning the air, and halting the growth of carbon the world over.

You know China or Japan will do it if we don't. People want it. Here. There. Third world countries. Everywhere.

BTW, there is no such thing as clean coal. It just doesn't work. It doesn't.

Michael Muller,
Greenfield, MA