I have been thinking a lot about the next crisis after this virus problem is under control. That crisis will bring droughts that will drastically affect food production, make forest and grassland fires much worse, further warm the oceans, raise sea levels, cause nasty floods and bigger hurricanes and in general do much damage to many people. Good science predicts this crisis will likely become unstoppable by about 2040 if we do not make changes now.

We can act now to head off the worst effects of this problem, or we can follow the dictates of those who do not accept science. The choice is ours, and the next election will determine if we head off the crisis, or bury our heads in the sand by voting for a president who has been doing many things to make this problem worse, such as weakening the Environmental Protection Agency and weakening anti-pollution controls. With fewer pollution controls, you will be drinking toxic chemicals and breathing many more pollutants.

I assume you have heard of this crisis: climate change. This crisis could make life quite nasty for your children and grandchildren if we make the wrong choice. If we make the right choice at the next election, we can move quickly to become more dependent on wind and solar power. We should phase out fossil fuels as rapidly as we can. Oil would mainly be used to produce lubricants. The federal government will need to tax fossil fuels heavily and build a modern electric transmission system which can move electric power from any point of production to any point where the energy is needed. The government should make low-interest loans to help people buy electric cars, to install roof-top solar and for electric utilities to build wind turbines. We also should move to transportation that runs on hydrogen.

There are many advantages to this new order. There will be no coal miners getting black lung disease. Fracking for gas will no longer contaminate underground drinking water supplies. We will have fewer droughts to destroy our crops, fewer forest and grassland fires, fewer floods, fewer cities going under water. The new technologies will produce many high paying jobs. The government should pay to train people for the new high paying jobs.

On the other hand, if we vote for those who ignore science, and will not push for useful changes, we will get to see loss of portions of cities along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. We will see more people with asthma and bronchitis. Life spans will be shorter. More people will be killed by hurricanes and tornadoes. In New England, we will lose all maple trees, with a big loss to the fall foliage tourist trade. We also will see many species that we love go extinct. The economy will suffer. We already are well into the sixth extinction.

Voting matters. We desperately need educated voters who want to follow scientific guidance and not wishful thinking. The planet Earth will exist either way, but most of the human population will suffer if we make the wrong choice. Register to vote, and vote smart.