Climate: no free lunch

Stan Gaby gets one small thing right in his letter “Stop blaming Trump for global warming” (March 29). Increased global warming can lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions — notably in the case of methane being released from permafrost in the Arctic. What he gets wrong is that this is not a spontaneous occurrence — the melting of the permafrost is the result of global increases in temperature primarily caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. This creates a feedback loop, in which one bad outcome leads to an increase in other bad outcomes.

Why should conservatives find it so hard to accept the findings of climate science? Climate change is the perfect scientific example of the first bedrock conservative principle: There is no free lunch. You can't take massive amounts of fossil fuels out of the ground and burn them without consequences. It is time that we take responsibility for these consequences. There was also a time that conservatives were advocates of personal responsibility. Clearly, those days are gone. Or is personal responsibility only for other people? Bill Morrison East Lyme