Thank you for calling our attention to the issue of climate change with your editorial cartoon from the May 22 edition. You seem to imply that if one calls for a decrease in fossil fuel extraction yet continues to use fossil fuel products they are hypocritical. By doing so you fell right into the message trap laid out by the industry spin doctors.

It is virtually impossible to not use petroleum-based products in modern society. However given the immediate and long term adverse consequences to human health and well being that result from our current energy choices, what would be hypocritical is to not speak up. With asthma rates on the rise, heart attacks and strokes triggered by “bad air days,” droughts in California and Eastern Washington, floods in Texas, famine in Africa, killer heat in India, we are threatened as a species right here and now.

If warming trends continue more heat-related illnesses, more tropical diseases and more food-and- water-related conflicts are all coming our way. It is time for a transition away from dirty, harmful, unhealthy old fuels, to a modern clean energy economy.

Rather than mocking the protesters you ought to be proposing solutions. It is time for the price of fossil fuels to fairly reflect the costs of their use. It is time to put a price on carbon.

Mark Vossler, Kirkland