For a moment, let’s forget about the personalities at the top of the D and R tickets and consider an overriding issue — climate change.

One party takes it seriously while the other plays lip service or dismisses it altogether, advocating drilling for more fossil fuel, particularly in the Arctic.

Project 2025, being promoted by the Republican Party, would downsize the Environmental Protection Agency and eliminate the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. States would be prevented from adopting stricter emission standards. So much for the Maine Climate Council and its motto — Maine Won’t Wait.

The National Flood Insurance Program would be turned over to private insurers. Good luck in finding an affordable policy.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which offers $350 billion for clean technology, would be repealed.

Project 2025 would prevent the federal government from regulating greenhouse gas. As a physician, I am concerned about rising temperatures (heat stroke), dirtier air (worse asthma) and more mosquitos and ticks (malaria and Lyme disease). Higher temperatures lead to higher tempers, which in turn lead to more personal violence. Our emergency rooms are busy enough already.

Every day we read about heavier rainfall and landslides here, droughts and forest fires there, rising sea levels along our coast, lobsters heading toward cooler water — the list goes on and on and is attributed to climate change.

What world are we leaving for our children and the generations that follow? People should consider all of this when they go to vote.

Edward Walworth, Lewiston