Gov. Larry Hogan has recently been reneging on his feigned commitment to the environment during the campaign ("Hogan steps back from clean-energy efforts, citing cost to consumers," June 7).
For someone who never hesitated to celebrate his own business acumen, he is surprisingly incapable of accurately analyzing the costs and benefits of his decisions. He may have saved his supporters and himself a few extra dollars, but at what cost?
Does Governor Hogan really care that little about the generations that will follow his to the point that he is willing to sacrifice us for a slightly thicker wallet? He needs to realize that the environment needs to be a priority now even if it costs us a few dollars in the short term.
Putting the environment first is the smart decision from both a social and a fiscal perspective. Climate change is real, and the effects are not only coming in the future but have already arrived.
We already have witnessed more occurrences of extreme weather and the worsening of natural disasters, but far too many of our leaders still balk at the causes.
It is genuinely difficult to determine whether they actually believe that climate change isn't happening or that it's not a threat to our livelihoods or whether they are just pretending that it is all a farce because it will further line their pockets.
Regardless of their motives, I and most people of my generation and later would like to secure our environmental future before we pass the point of no return.
I want to see a future without the impending heat waves and air quality worsening that will endanger the health of thousands, without our coastal areas being irreversibly damaged from sea level rise and without the widespread damage from extreme weather events.
A 2014 White House report predicted those outcomes in our state, and they are truly daunting. Mr. Hogan needs to see what the entire scientific community has already made obvious: We need action on the environment to prevent health consequences, save property and preserve our state.
It seems that he is unable to look at this situation from a humanistic perspective so maybe he can look at it from an economic one: If we do not act to preserve the environment, we will face an increasingly difficult economic future.
Healthcare costs could skyrocket. We already have significant issues with respiratory illnesses in Baltimore, but if air quality declines our system will be grossly unprepared to deal with the sharp rise in people needing health care attention.
And the jump in health care costs won't be the only monetary consequence we will have to deal with. Maryland prides itself on its coastline, but that might become more of a liability if the environmental situation worsens. Our ports could suffer serious damage and our tourist shoreline areas could be damaged as well.
This will both take increased investment to remedy and will damage the crucial pieces of the Maryland economy that exist in both places. This does not even touch on what could happen should natural disasters begin to have an increased impact on our state, which would be likely given the projections from climate scientists.
Multiple facets of our lives in the future will suffer should our leaders continue to put slightly increasing their comfort now over the livelihoods of future generations. Does Mr. Hogan want to be remembered as the governor who hindered our state's progress toward a better environmental future or as the governor who forged ahead to secure the environmental and economic condition of our state?
He still has a couple of years left in his term; his legacy is yet to be defined. I hope that he takes the time to consider which is most important to him.
Ari Goldstein, Owings Mills