When a person breathes in, the air is significantly different than the air breathed a decade or more ago. Human beings have altered the Earth’s atmosphere by burning carbon-based fossil fuels. Recently, the president of the Maldives, a small island nation in the Indian Ocean which is under severe threat from rising seas, put the situation in stark terms: “If things go business as usual, we will not live. We will die. Our country will not exist.”

There is a moral imperative for people to act to solve this problem. Climate change is not something that will come in the future; it is a current crisis with real, human victims. Villages have already been evacuated from some Pacific islands. Closer to home, increasing floods, drought and wildfires are all effects of climate change. The point is not to argue about whether any given event is directly caused by climate change; the global climate is obviously complex and difficult to predict. The point is that there will be more of these events, right here in the U.S. These events directly affect the safety and security of families.

I hope others will join me in urging Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to pass cap and trade legislation. Furthermore, the key ingredient for successful climate negotiations is political will from the United States. The sources of that will are U.S. citizens. We must consider the moral imperative to act and act now.

Aaron Strong, Auburn