Global Climate Change- letter to senators

Global Climate Change

I am writing this letter to urge you to stop the Trump administration from dismissing climate change. Please do not let Pruitt become the helm the EPA, please bring back EPA grants and contracts, and please fight to keep the climate change website up and not censored. Global climate change is not a hoax, it is real, and it impacts life across the globe.

I have a career doing research. One huge take away from graduate school is that we understand enough of biodiversity, or the variety of life on Earth including genetic variation within a species, to know that it is key to the functioning of this planet(1). Further, because of global climate change we know that our planet's biodiversity is disappearing everyday(2,3). The impact of biodiversity loss is all encompassing.  From the inevitable extinction of the polar bear, a keystone species (4,5) and the American pika (6), to the loss of diversity in phytoplantkon that provide our planet with oxygen, to indigenous people that are being displaced from their homes (7), and to the lack of food to feed our planet(8).

I am also a compassionate human being and science aside am baffled at how an administration and their supporters can have so little compassion for life. Indigenous people are suffering and large keystone species are dying just to mention a few examples. Is there no morality in government or in the people anymore?

We need to protect this planet not only for the future of our children but because every living thing deserves dignity. Providing a few jobs or increasing wages will be temporary if we don't have a planet to support us. I find it unconscionable that a world superpower is not taking the lead in climate change policy but is actually about to take multiple steps backwards.

I have provided a few scientific peer reviewed research articles from some of the most reputable journals to support this letter. Please take a look at them.

I appreciate your attention.

Regards,
Julie Zickovich

4225 Toole
Bozeman MT 59718
406-581-2191
zickovich@hotmail.com



1  http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n1/abs/nclimate1627.htm
2  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v427/n6970/abs/nature02121.html
3  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01736.x/full
4 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/09-1641.1/full
5  http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1183
6 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131082
7 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953615002555
8 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/319/5863/607