Why everyone should care about the climate

David Mastio’s provocative commentary (“Why I don’t really care about the climate,” Daily Camera 5-21-2025), contains some truth. Opposition by local environmental or neighbor groups is one of the biggest impediments to the deployment of the cleanest energy sources: wind, solar and storage.

But he misses the point when he claims that Texas is besting California in developing these resources because it doesn’t care about climate. While it might be nice if Bernie no longer used a private plane, individual actions alone will not be the solution.

More sweeping federal and state policy has the most significant impact. Texas has more wind and solar due to its unique control of transmission in the state allowing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to build out lines to capture these resources in remote locations and to bring them to cities that need power. Nationwide, more than 95% of energy projects waiting for permits are wind, solar and battery storage.

In July, I am headed to D.C. to lobby Congress to adopt some of the lessons about transmission and permitting from Texas.

You can help either in D.C. or locally by checking out actions with Citizens’ Climate Lobby citizensclimatelobby.org. Please join me in refusing to sit by while our planet burns!

— K.K. DuVivier, Boulder