I wanted to write a letter congratulating the auto industry for announcing its plan to focus on making electric cars. Good on them, but that was before President Donald Trump’s EPA announced it intends to abandon the clean energy plan and allow more greenhouse gases from power plants into the environment. We don’t need more dirty energy. We have clean alternatives that are good for the economy and create good jobs.

Climate change is a crucial issue for everyone. We’ve just seen a tragic hurricane season in the South and raging wild fires out West. How much more evidence do we need to see before we do something? The vast majority of scientists believe climate change is happening, that it’s happening faster than previously thought and that man-made greenhouse gases are at least partly to blame.

It was a mistake for the United States to pull out of the Paris Accord on climate change. It is a mistake to allow big-money industries to dictate our energy policies and ruin our environment. Hopefully we can all stop fighting each other long enough to take the steps necessary to slow down and reverse our effect on the climate before it is too late.

Deb Stahler

Mount Vernon