Editorial voices from across the country
Editorial voices from newspapers across the United States:
The Great Lakes are steaming toward an invasive species iceberg while those with power to steer away from catastrophe continue to belligerently delay any meaningful intervention that could prevent disaster.
Last week that collision catapulted closer to the point of no return as officials announced they found an 8-pound Asian carp on the wrong side of electric barriers placed in the Chicago Area Waterway System to keep the destructive invasive species from reaching the nation’s most important freshwater ecosystem. It’s an intersection that promises to cause preventable, irreparable damage to the lakes we all so love.
Continuous pleas for action have been met by unending false reassurances and years of studies – the latest U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ draft report is being delayed by the White House – that still aren’t complete.
Those reports are expected to outline the need for substantial barriers, far more than existing electric barriers, to prevent Asian carp from invading Lake Michigan where researchers say they likely would decimate delicate aquatic ecosystems by devouring plankton that forms the foundation of the food chain.
Like an iceberg, the danger of Asian carp marching toward Lake Michigan isn’t what we see, it’s what lies below the water’s surface that could sink our beloved lakes.
The dimensions of the opioid epidemic have become well known. In Vermont 106 people died from opioid overdoses in 2016, a huge leap – 41 percent – from the year before.
Nationally, the total was about 59,000 deaths.
That’s more than died in the entire Vietnam War.
The hardest hit states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were in the South and Northeast, including West Virginia, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Ohio and Rhode Island. States experiencing significant increases in 2015 included Florida, Connecticut, Louisiana and Maine. Vermont’s 41 percent increase qualifies as significant.
It should not escape notice that many of the states suffering the worst are Trump country. Appalachia has seen a scourge of addiction, and mortality rates among white males have begun to rise rather than decline. Nationally, drugs are the largest cause of death for people under 50.
Cutting federal money available to Vermont, Kentucky and other states grappling with the problem seems like an assault on America.
Faced with President Barack Obama’s embrace of this progressive role in relation to health care, Republicans have vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, fostering belief in a contrary view: that government aid amounts to a handout for the lazy, undeserving poor.
Except now, people of all income levels and social groups have been afflicted with an addiction that is eating away at our communities. Turning our backs on those who suffer the illness of addiction is turning our backs on our friends and family members, on our communities, on the American people.
We don’t doubt the science that cures major illnesses and has greatly extended the length and quality of human life.
But even though 97 percent of the world’s climate scientists have concluded that climate warming trends are caused, at least in part, by human activity, and that this warming poses an existential threat to life on earth as we know it, Republican leaders in Congress and the White House say there is too much doubt around the science to take action and that agreeing to reduce our carbon emissions will damage the nation’s economy.
Donald Trump was very clear that if elected president he would pull the United States from the Paris Agreement and that’s exactly what he did June 1.
But a strange thing happened following Trump’s announcement. Led by California, New York and Michigan, a dozen states, including Massachusetts and Vermont, which are led by Republican governors, vowed to honor the Paris Agreement and work aggressively toward meeting carbon emission reduction goals.
While we wait for our nation’s top leaders to begin to think globally, it is good to see so many who respect the science and are willing to act locally before it’s too late.