Letters to the Editor: Climate change is a global threat, but it isn’t the worst one. This is

To the editor: Climate change is the biggest threat facing us? How I wish that were true. (“Let’s not let political chaos distract us from the unfolding climate catastrophe,” editorial, Nov. 22)

What is true is that if humanity ceases to exist in the next 100 years, it will not be because of climate change. All of us are alive at the pleasure of a handful of leaders scattered throughout the world, any one of whom could call an end to the human species in a blink of an eye.

That includes the leaders of the U.S., Russia, China, India and Pakistan. Soon, that list may include the leaders of North Korea and Iran — and who knows how many others as the nuclear genie multiplies throughout the world?

It is long past time for thought leaders to wake up to the world’s most urgent threat and get a real conversation going on how to save the planet.

Bill Bloomfield, Park City, Utah

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To the editor: President-elect Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” edict is a business-as-usual approach to using fossil fuels that will raise Earth’s average temperature above the treacherous threshold of 2 degrees Celsius by 2050.

At this level of increase to the average global temperature, the cascade of consequences will be tragic in a world where the population increases to 9 billion people.

The battle of our time is between who we have become and who we might yet be. If we cannot escape the seductive pull of fossil fuels and the material things they provide for us, all life is in peril.

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Rings,” Frodo says, “I wish it need not have happened in my time.” Gandalf answers: “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

May we decide wisely.

Phil Beauchamp, Chino Hills

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To the editor: The annual United Nations climate conference was just held in Baku, Azerbaijan. It is rather difficult to regard these annual conferences as meaningful, since those attending are clouding the skies with the exhaust from all of their private jets flying in.

Maybe a Zoom call would have been more effective in convincing the public of the “dire consequences of climate change.”

Janet Polak, Beverly Hills