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If we want a survivable future, we need to stop burning fossil fuels. And we need to do it much faster even than outlined in state climate law. Fred LeBrun’s column, “Like it or not, we can’t get by without fossil fuels,” Aug. 10, largely ignores that climate change poses an existential threat to humanity.

We have the technology to respond to the crisis. What we lack is the political will.

Fossil fuel companies are able to continue their pollution because our capitalist system provides them with an annual subsidy of $7 trillion, according to the International Monetary Fund. The biggest part of this subsidy is governments’ failure to charge fossil fuels for the damages their pollution causes. The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that fossil-fuel air pollution costs each American $2,500 in extra health care costs every year. Here in New York, that works out to almost $50 billion.

But Gov. Kathy Hochul has delayed her meager cap-and-trade proposal, which would at least put a nominal price on carbon emissions.

In 2010, I was one of the initial authors of the Green New Deal, combining a 10-year transition to zero emissions with an “Economic Bill of Rights.” Such a transition would lower energy costs while being a full employment program.

Fossil fuel companies use their influence, including campaign contributions, to defeat efforts to curtail their use. In 2024, Donald Trump openly called for them to give his campaign a billion dollars to protect them.

Some climate scientists soft-pedal the realities of climate change, worrying that speaking the truth might produce a sense of hopelessness that we have waited too long to make a difference, leading to resignation. But the failure to educate the public leads to columns such as LeBrun’s.

The writer is the author of “Putting out the Planetary Fire.”

Published Aug. 25, 2025

The Times Union presented an excellent article........

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