Enact steps to help preserve climate

By Dr. Joanne Leovy, Las Vegas

Sunday, May 11, 2014 | 2:03 a.m.

The newly released National Climate Assessment offers a stark, well-documented, rigorous scientific view of effects of climate change on our lives in the Southwest. Unless we take significant national and global action to drastically reduce carbon emissions, we in Southern Nevada are bound to experience direct effects of climate disruption: higher average temperatures, increased drought severity, higher ozone levels and wildfires.

Predicted health effects include cardiac and respiratory disease related to air pollution, decreased food security and more days each summer with dangerous heat.

Fortunately, the assessment outlines a number of steps to reduce these frightening effects for our children and grandchildren. Solutions include greatly expanding wind, solar and geothermal energy; reducing the time we spend traveling by car; and decreasing meat consumption.

These changes will have immediate health benefits, as well as long-term benefits to the environment.

I urge our leaders and elected representatives, as well as each reader concerned about making ethical choices for our future, to work to enact the assessment’s recommendations.