Next meeting will feature three speakers on climate change

HUMANIST ASSOCIATION

by Dave Silva

LW contributor

The Leisure World Humanist Association will present a program on climate change on Sunday, Oct. 3 in Clubhouse 3, Room 1. Masks will be worn at the meeting in complance with Leisure World rules.

The humanist position on environmental issues is that people have a moral obligation to leave this world a better place, not only for their descendants, but also for the animals and biodiversity of our planet. Humanists are concerned that, largely due to political forces and ignorance of scientific reality, nations are not addressing the causes of climate change rapidly enough.

There will be three speakers on the subject, followed by a question and answer session. The first speaker will be Yara Cuetara, who is a longtime humanist and environmentalist. Cuetara will talk about the disastrous and costly results of doing nothing about climate change. Coastal cities will have to be abandoned; the state has already seen what wildfires, violent storms and oppressive heat have done. Those costly events will only get worse if people continue to do nothing. There is no “planet B” to save us from what humans have created.

Dave Silva will address the political climate that makes it difficult to pass needed legislation to stop the heating of the world. There are powerful business interests who politically resist clean renewable energy, and create millions of jobs, so they can make short-term profits. International cooperation is often given lip service when meaningful action is needed to avert disasters in the near future that will cost trillions of dollars and create climate refugees and global instability. Silva is the only Leisure World resident to have ever run for a statewide office for a major party, when he ran for the state assembly in 2004. The third speaker will be writer and artist Noel Markham, who will talk about what Leisure World can do right now and in the very near future to deal with the problem. Markham will have a handout presenting some positive things the community could do.

The Leisure World Humanist Association plans to do a number of programs on important social issues because it believes they should be openly and honestly debated.