Opinion: Want to slow climate change and prevent wildfires? Then pass a carbon tax now.

To the editor: I read Jacques Leslie’s op-ed article, “Santa Rosa’s charred now, but we’re all facing fire (or flood or heat wave) soon,” while taking a break from disaster preparations. You know: stockpiling water and food, gathering first-aid supplies, purchasing a generator.

Recent and ongoing disaster response is teaching us we have to be prepared to take care of ourselves for several days until help arrives, whether we are threatened by wildfire, floods or an earthquake. With the unprecedented number and magnitude of disasters occurring nearly simultaneously, it may be reasonable to expect help to arrive slowly.

Surely it is even more reasonable to expect our leaders to take action before disasters strike by addressing their chief accelerator, human-induced global warming. A gradually escalating price on carbon, specifically a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend, would reduce the amount of greenhouse gases entering our atmosphere while encouraging the use of energy sources other than fossil fuels.

It would be a powerful move away from disaster.

Peggy Painton, Los Angeles

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To the editor: With all my emotion and intellect, I sorrowfully agree with Leslie. Why must we all wait for these catastrophes to happen to us before we acknowledge we have to accept what scientists have been warning us about for decades?

We need to hold our leaders accountable for the responsibility they are neglecting. And we need to hold ourselves responsible as well.

We are all in this together, both in the cause and in the solution, whether we like it or not.

Virginia Bernal, Santa Ana

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