Demand conversion! Letter to Editor
To Peaceworks
Demand conversion!
Re: 22 Arrested at BIW: Climate crisis the biggest threat to security; Use defense funds for climate solutions
We are now talking about extinction — scientists talk about 20-50 years — human, as well as the million species already documented as extinct in our lifetime. It is already beyond time to face the climate crisis and ignoring all the bleakness of this truth won't help. Our kids will not be able to ignore it.
What will help is joining the campaign to convert Bath Iron Works to building products to help solve the climate crisis, not contribute to it. BIW has both the industrial capacity and the skilled workforce to show leadership to the nation by this conversion. Maine can take on the challenge to build products that will save our future, rather than more multi-billion-dollar warships we do not need, and that only contribute to climate collapse.
On June 22, another 22 environmental and peace activists were arrested in civil resistance to the "christening" of the USS Daniel Inouye Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer. Nine of the protestors spent three days in jail, as they refused to pay bail in solidarity with all those who are unable to pay.
Given the accelerating speed of the climate crisis and the current administration's frightening level of denial as they push for a bloated and dangerous $750 billion Pentagon budget as well as planning to spend $1.7 trillion on new nuclear weapons, we all must follow the example of these activists. Demand conversion! Redirect funds to build sustainable energy systems.
Listen to the activists from #convertBIW campaign. Listen to the young climate activists worldwide. They know this is a matter of life and death. It is time to join them. Conversion will create more skilled jobs, not less. Contact our representatives. There are no jobs on a dead planet.
Meredith Bruskin
Swanville
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