Before It’s Too Late

Please let “Before It’s Too Late” be the last Sun interview with an environmentalist that omits any mention of the devastating impact of animal agriculture.

Anyone fed up with regressive politics should read Carol J. Adams and Virginia Messina’s Protest Kitchen to understand how our food choices affect policy. Anyone who thinks humans will never give up eating meat should read Paul Shapiro’s Clean Meat to learn how scientists can now grow meat in a lab without slaughtering animals. And anyone who doesn’t understand how meat, dairy, and egg consumption support patriarchy and white supremacy should read Aphro-ism by sisters Aph and Syl Ko.

The Sun is losing its progressive edge by overlooking the political, social, economic, and environmental effects of animal agriculture. The very UN report that Mary Christina Wood references shows how changing our food consumption is a necessary part of efforts to prevent rising global temperatures.

Carla Golden Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

Mary DeMocker’s interview with Mary Christina Wood on avoiding climate disaster [“Before It’s Too Late,” February 2019] is the cry of the watchman on the wall, the warning of the sentinel. It is powerful, timely, and real.

Wood identifies two seemingly impossible challenges before us: the advanced nature of the disinformation effort in the U.S., and our collective lack of awareness. I appreciated her admonition to do what we can, wherever we are; it is too easy to be overwhelmed by the scope of the issues.

Roland White Tallahassee, Florida

As a parent of three young children, I was both rattled and inspired by Mary DeMocker’s interview with Mary Christina Wood [“Before It’s Too Late,” February 2019]. I love her suggestion to be a person who “wakes people up.” In an effort to take on this role, I have started a book club with friends and family. Contrary to what some letters in your May 2019 Correspondence implied, Wood’s work is incredibly worthy: from fighting for the environment in the judicial arena, to canning her own food, to finding joy in a family bike ride. No one person has all the answers. The situation is far too complex for that. The best each of us can do is embrace our role in the vast healing that needs to occur on our planet.

Megan Thornton Bozeman, Montana

I’ve been thinking lately about the distinction between a gesture and a solution. A solution is something that will fix the problem. A gesture is something people do to indicate that they are concerned — and to encourage others to share that concern — with the knowledge that it won’t actually fix the problem. Every proposal I’ve read to solve climate change turns out to be a gesture.

I read Mary DeMocker’s interview with Mary Christina Wood hoping, in her plan to solve climate change via the U.S. judicial system, she might have a solution. Alas, she has gestures.

The U.S. political system does not support Wood’s strategy of finding an unelected individual — a federal judge — to address global warming by forcing changes to entire sectors of the country’s economy, like power generation or auto manufacturing.

And the problem goes beyond this country. I’m a frequent visitor to Wuhan, China, an industrial city five hundred miles west of Shanghai, where the air is acrid and brown. You can’t fix climate change without fixing China, India, and the other countries that are opening new coal-fired power plants every year. They do so because fossil fuels are the least expensive way to satisfy their citizens’ demand for energy. An American judge would have zero impact on these countries, the main source of the problem.

Michael Lutz North Bethesda, Maryland