Web Letters: How Green Is Your Collar?

Thank you for writing this summary. It seems as though the major American unions are still dragging their feet but are beginning their own slow process of recognizing the severity of the threat to the planet and thus to their own memberships' interests.

I still feel as though there's a strange dissonance here. I see decision-makers in our country placing current economic concerns over what's obviously a monstrous future danger, but they defend the economy very strangely -- failing to protect home equity and job quality, for instance. It seems as though union leaders could capitalize on this, and point to the green future as the one where neither natural distress nor deregulated theft steals food from kids' mouths.

But I don't see the unions picturing that future very well. In fact, it was mentioned in a N.Y. Times blog that NASA scientist James Hansen et al. are convinced that letting carbon dioxide in the air to go over 450 ppm -- from 385 ppm now -- would risk everything. Further, that we need to remove CO2, stabilizing the atmosphere at 350 ppm.

Those are critical numbers. Those are real goals. If your doctor told you those were necessary, you'd follow that advice, and yet the unions, responsible for the welfare of millions of people who are otherwise not represented well in Washington, D.C., don't seem concerned?

David Powers

San Francisco, CA