Support needed for Green New Deal

At 92, I’ve lived through the Dust Bowl years, the Great Depression and Roosevelt’s leading the nation back out of those tragic times. Now, the fires in California warn us of greater hazards ahead for all of us. Climate change will devastate not only forests, but entire areas and their way of life and their economy. I worry for us, and our beautiful forests up here, for the entire, beautiful, varied, American landscapes, and for younger people who must carry on to face problems we elders never imagined back then — not just Olympian, or Pacific Northwest, or American, but world-wide problems wrought by climate change.

Roosevelt responded to our national need back then with the New Deal, which tackled environment degradation and unemployment. It worked.

Now young people, led by new Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, have an idea — a resolution I support for the sake of all our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren — a House Select Committee for a Green New Deal in Congress. Their Green New Deal would create millions of green jobs and help do America’s part to decrease climate change by making our economy sustainable without reliance on fossil fuels.

I call on my Congressional members to support these young people in their efforts to shoulder this load with us, and as we older folks drop back, shoulder it for us; a Green New Deal.

I was there; I saw it, my family lived it. Let’s not have those old hard-scrabble times, those ruined-landscapes come again.