To the editor:
I want to urge everyone in the ConVal School District to vote “yes” on Article 5, the 300kW solar project on ConVal High School. It is a project that won’t cost anything to install and will save the district about $15,000 annually. With these numbers, it is a fiscally responsible course of action. Even more important, it is a project that will prevent the emission of 364,481 pounds of carbon dioxide each year, and is, therefore, the morally responsible course of action.
We have a moral responsibility to our students to do everything we can to pass on a habitable planet. While signs of the climate crisis continue to grow, global emissions are rising unabated. Our students deserve more than this. Once far off predictions of extreme droughts, raging wildfires, and biblical floods are happening now, and occurring with increasing frequency. Our students deserve better than this. Many young people have told me that they are scared about their future and the planet they will inherit. Our students deserve less fear and more hope. But hope isn’t something that you can create just by wanting it. Hope is something we must manifest through our actions. Voting “yes” to approve the solar project at ConVal is an action that creates hope. It sends a clear message to our students – a message that we care about them and their future.
Dori Drachman
Member of the Peterborough Energy Committee