“Bucks County sues ExxonMobil, Chevron, others over climate change” read the headline in the March 28 Herald. I chuckled at first, since we were close to April 1, but as I read further, I could see that this was not a joke.
So our recent floods and storms are the fault of a handful of companies that provided what people demanded — a means to heat their homes and power their transportation.
Did these corporations authorize the building of apartment complexes on floodplains? Did they build roads throughout the county to encourage people to drive their cars?
Oil companies provided people with what they wanted. Blaming them for tornadoes is both laughable and a sad commentary on our ignorance of how the Earth works.
As a professional geologist who has studied Earth processes for many years, I can tell you that reducing the cause of these disasters to “climate change” ignores many of the factors that have contributed to these events. Storms will occur and rivers will flood, even in the absence of increased carbon dioxide, and we should direct our efforts to keeping our residents out of harm’s way.
As a Bucks County resident, I am dismayed that we are spending tax dollars on an expensive and foolish legal quagmire instead of helping people whose lives were upended and developing rational plans to avoid such destruction in the future.
Richard Yuretich, New Britain Township
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