Many years ago my aunt in Los Angeles had a yellow 240Z. She was proud of it, and proud that she took the initiative to buy it, independently of my uncle.
Unfortunately, nobody ever told her, or she forgot, that she had to change the oil.
After about 15,000 miles, the oil pressure light came on. She thought it was just a mild warning. Thirty seconds later the engine seized on the highway.
Luckily, nobody was hurt. The car had to be junked.
Nobody reading this letter would forget to change the oil in their car. But millions of us are ignoring a warning light that has been flashing on our dashboards for 40 years. It is saying “Climate Change!”
We are acting as though we have many years to deal with this problem. We actually have only an unknown few.
We should be making maximum effort to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, but we aren’t. We are inflicting varying degrees of pain on ourselves and all the citizens of the world.
We are still buying big gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks and heating our homes with fuel oil.
The flashing dashboard light keeps me awake at night.
Ben Lounsbury, Auburn
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