Letter | Climate change is not something to get used to

Dear Editor: Change is hard. I feel for the folks near the Badger Hollow Wind project who worry about the possible health effects of wind farms and don’t like how they look.

I struggle with change, too. When I was young, I collected butterflies and cross-country skied. The butterflies are mostly gone now. So is snow to ski on.

Another change is the increase in extreme weather. Over the past few weeks, windstorms have devastated Iowa and Illinois, and severe rain, flooding and tornadoes have destroyed neighborhoods and killed people across the Midwest and South.

These changes are caused, in large part, to burning fossil fuels for energy. Burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide, which traps heat in the atmosphere and heats up the planet.

We need to change how we produce energy — fast.

So why wind energy? It’s one of the cleanest sources of energy there is. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, onshore wind energy has about one-75th the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of coal-produced energy.

Perhaps the folks near Badger Hollow Wind will get used to wind turbines. I don’t think any of us can get used to out of control climate change.

Steve Lewis

Fitchburg

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