Don Salcedo
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
The exchange of letters on the debate on climate change reminds me of an incident that occurred with me more than 50 years ago. I was teaching elementary school at one of the largest school districts in Missouri. My science textbook was more than 20 years out of date, and my principal agreed with me. He said that he taught science in the same school district before he went into administration. He said he used supplemental educational material to close the gap that the outdated science material created. I found a book written by a scientist who worked on his doctoral thesis regarding the use of public drinking water in the United States.
His book was filled with all kinds of scientific statistics in which he said that if Americans do not curb the abuse of corporations in the United States contaminating our drinking water, that the general public would lose confidence in the quality and quantity of our drinking water in this country. He predicted that in 50 years time by the year 2005, Americans will go to their local supermarket and buy bottles of drinking water off the supermarket shelves.
When the parents of my students heard about our classroom discussions on science, some of them kicked up a fuss. The parents contended that the prospect of having to go to a supermarket to buy drinking water would never happened in their lifetimes. My principal told me that to keep the downtown office off his back I should not teach anything in science class that was not in the school district’s adopted science textbook. After several years I left teaching and the two part-time jobs that I had to supplement my meager teacher salary and earn a good living outside the classroom.
I would respectfully submit to the climate change deniers that even if you do not believe in climate change, it would seem prudent in this day and age to move away from the outdated fossil fuels technologies for our sources of energy and go with the more abundant and many times cheaper renewable energy sources.
I have seen an abundance of evidence that would strongly suggest that we cannot wait 10 or 20 years to find out that the climate change deniers are just as wrong as those parents I confronted many years ago.