Rollback of Maine’s bag ban, efforts to place a moratorium on dam removals, attacks on rooftop and community solar, blocking of the proposed offshore wind port, repeal of clean energy goals, promotion of nuclear power, increasing fossil fuel dependence and relaxing Maine’s mining laws — these are the intentions of multiple bills introduced in the Maine House by various Republican representatives. These proposals align with a national agenda, promoted by the Trump administration, which is more concerned with climate denial than climate change.

Whatever diminishing benefits result from these environmentally negative proposals will be erased by the costs to human health, increasing weather damage to our infrastructure and ignorance of a natural world which will no longer support us. I do not see commitment to anything that could at least mitigate these increasingly obvious problems that, apparently, will come with no buyer’s remorse.

My “old guard” Republican grandfather was a county commissioner for 25 years. The reason he lasted so long was his ability to talk with people and to recognize change. He stuck to his conservative “guns” but he knew how to negotiate and cooperate. He didn’t wait to sink or swim. I may not hold the same views as he did, though thinking ahead is a shared trait. We were lucky enough to watch a man walk on the moon together.

Douglas Yohman
East Waterboro