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In talking with someone recently, someone on the other political spectrum than myself, I  hung up totally dumbfounded by this highly intelligent person not wanting to believe in scientific facts.

When I was asked, “How would your parents feel about what’s going on?” I should have responded that they too would be shocked as to how no one on either side of the political circus is willing to be honest and have the moral fortitude to go with  scientific data. The fear mongering as witnessed on a cable network staffed by people with  minimal science background, is certainly not enough to talk with complete assurance and knowledge on the subject of climate chaos.  Instead, they spout falsehoods or confuse weather with climate!

As we talked I tried to  be an educator with the scientific fact that anything above 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere renders the planet unsustainable. Then methane came into focus and I mentioned that is even more damaging to Mother Earth than CO2. As far as where we are at currently with our atmospheric CO2, it’s hovering between 420-440 parts per million.

The worldwide bizarre happenings to weather is directly related to manmade climate chaos. I have to ask myself why, since the 1940s when every president  knew man was responsible for climate change, has virtually very little been done to reverse the situation or at least try to stop it from getting worse and totally out of control.

The why is sadly very simple. It’s called oil lobbyists. Like the cigarette lobbyists  of the 1950s, who claimed that cigarette smoking was not a factor in lung cancer and many other diagnosis, so too the huge  number of oil lobbyists who lie telling us they are not part of increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere. The 1% could care less about us!

Are people just not paying attention?  Or has our education system gone the way as predicted in the book, “Dark Money,” where a group from D.C. purposefully dumbed down our education system because you can’t have a democracy with stupid people.  Sadly, Minnesota is now 49th in a nation of 50 states!  How did that even happen?  When I was a kid, we were in the top three.

When I heard  the conversation went from science to how our governor is allowing people to “grow cocaine” in their back yards, I gave up!

Roberta Mistretta

Austin, MN