Dear Editor,

A week ago, I started reading reports all over mainstream media that the chances climate change will end civilization by 2050 are a coin toss. The source of this news originates with an Australian think tank, known as "Breakthrough." See https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/papers I saw on a report from The Young Turks, that this is a conservative estimate, and that civilization could collapse due to climate change as soon as six years. But to quote from "Breakthrough": "It's not a technological or a scientific problem. It's a question of humanity's socio-political values. We need a social tipping point that tips our thinking before we reach a tipping point in the climate system." Annihilation is not inevitable, but without immediate, drastic action our hope is grim. The need is for local and global leadership to act. This is a local paper, and I always think personally I have more potential to make impact on a local level, so my question is what can be done locally to ensure fossil fuel divestment as quickly as possible, what can be done locally to stop the true threat of consumer culture, what can be done locally to dismantle the looming net of the military industrial complex, what can be done locally to ensure food and water will exist if civilization crumbles or not, what can be done locally to ensure that the economy provides climate-change-useful jobs so workers are not wasting their time in a dead end zone of casino/consumer waste, what can be done locally so that women will be able to chose what they do with their bodies and not make the population even more unstable in scope? Can our local leaders talk about climate change at all and if they can't what is wrong with them/us? Forty eight individuals are so rich that they have a wealth equal to the poorest half of the world. Our local leaders could do so much good, it wouldn't matter if civilization ended, we could be the one of the areas that survived no matter what. For the past week, since learning of the looming number of 2050 as the conservative estimate for the end of civilization, I have been shocked and dismayed. I don't think a healthy response is to grow distressed or to think too much about the tentative date. We need to mobilize to save our Earth. But for now, I have run out of words...