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Press politicians to act on climate
Great article by Jeremy Moule on the Sierra Club lecture dealing with voluntary plans on lowering local emissions that are causing climate change ("Climate Change: It's All Up to You.") The article rightly advises that local governments will take voluntary action to reduce greenhouse emissions and promote climate change adaptations when constituents "push their elected officials."
The same is true for Congress, which has dragged its feet for decades because constituents have not pushed them hard enough.
The most recent IPCC report says global emissions can be reduced enough to curb climate, and can be controlled at little cost, if governments act immediately. Waiting longer will drive up costs.
Congress won't act until readers push their representatives to support climate change legislation. Please urge Representative Tom Reed to acknowledge the hardships that climate change will present to his constituents, and to support national climate change legislation.
JUDY WEISS, BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS
Weiss is a member of the Citizens' Climate Lobby.
Smoked out at bus shelters
Every morning I visit my mother in hospice at St. John's Nursing Home on South Avenue. I take the bus to and from. Many times I am forced to inhale second-hand smoke from St. John's employees who use the bus shelter as a weather-safe place to smoke.
I do not smoke and I have never smoked, and it is inconsiderate and a danger to my health for these employees to be smoking in my space. But they are not doing anything "wrong," because RTS has no smoking policy for their bus shelters.
Inconsiderate smokers who fill these shelters with smoke, endangering non-smoking bus patrons' rights, can and do do this. The bus shelters become littered with smoke butts, ironically, because these employees are not allowed to bring the negative effect to those where they work.
St. John's doesn't even have a place for these employees to put their cigarette butts, and in fact doesn't even have a garbage litter can there.
The bus company should place "no smoking" signs on all bus shelters, for the health and safety of its non-smoking patrons.
GEORGE ROSSI
