Reader's View: Don’t feel paralyzed over climate change

The May 7 story, “ Duluth high schoolers turn climate anxiety into activism, hope ,” stated, “When kids, and just people in general, get nervous about climate change, the first thing they do is get paralyzed and stop and not do anything.” My message to the kids: don’t get nervous about climate change, thinking you have to do something to stop it.

In the last three years, I’ve written 12 letters published in the News Tribune downplaying man’s responsibility for climate change.

In 2010, the Sierra Club, after receiving $50 million, put together a team of lawyers and activists who shut down 160 coal plants. The result? Atmospheric carbon dioxide just kept on rising, and there was little change for a better climate. It should be obvious that shutting down coal-fired plants in Becker, Minnesota, and Cohasset had little climate effect.

I went to Xcel’s website, under “Sustainability Report 2023,” and looked for something to explain how man’s puny 0.0016% of atmospheric gases can jerk the global climate system around. All I found were emission scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Chang e that align with Xcel’s in regard to the panel’s climate models. The whole “net zero carbon” movement seems to me a scam for picking the pockets of taxpayers and ratepayers (in addition to irritating landowners who do not want transmission lines).

And how do you obtain energy independence while being dependent on Chinese components for wind and solar power?

In summary, man-made climate change, like evolution, is largely a lot of worthless fluff and sound-and-fury propaganda that nobody can defend. There’s no cause for getting “paralyzed.”

Phil Drietz

Delhi, Minnesota