Letter: Do what you can to promote climate health

The drastic news of the California storms and flooding hit uncomfortably close to home in recent days.

I heard one story of a woman on her way home from work who had to abandon her car in a high spot to walk the next few miles in knee-deep water that smelled of the Pacific Ocean because she was afraid she would be swept away. As she walked, she was also terrified she would be electrocuted by electric cables that might have fallen into the water.

This could be any one of us regular folks on an otherwise ordinary day, except there was record-breaking rainfall and flooding amid a violent and deadly storm.

We now know that the warming temperatures that have arrived with climate change allow the air to hold more moisture, worsening all kinds of storms.

We can thank our leaders for recently enacting serious climate legislation, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, to make a dent in our carbon emissions, but we still have a long way to go. We need to keep the pressure on them to do more.

We can't just sit back and become numb to the deluge of disasters. How is it OK that a 5-year-old boy was taken from his mother by this horrific storm? What will it take for us to say enough is enough?

Please contact your members of Congress and insist they work together now to pass bipartisan measures that ramp up our fight against the unforgiving monster of climate change.

Karen Campbell

Bolingbrook