To the editor:

In 2015, St. Louis set records for the wettest year and the wettest single day ever in December.

Many of us suffered with flooded homes, basements and roads as the Meramec River swelled way beyond its banks worse than the floods of 1993.

Scientists tell us that climate change puts on extreme weather “on steroids,” creating wetter rains, drier droughts and stormier storms. The overwhelming evidence is that humans burning coal, oil and natural gas for energy currently causes climate change.

Such area GOP congressional leaders as U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner and U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt oppose President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon pollution at power plants here and throughout the nation. The good news for the GOP is this market-based alternative: Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s Carbon Fee and Dividend proposal. This proposal cuts carbon pollution much deeper than EPA regulations — 52 percent versus 32 percent — while growing the economy, creating over 2 million new jobs and not relying on EPA government regulations that the GOP distrusts.

Thus, Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s Carbon Fee and Dividend deserves close consideration from all of us, especially Sen. Blunt and Rep. Wagner.

Brian Ettling

south county