Editor:

To Mayor Davis and council members: My name is Sandra Baltzell, and I have been a resident of Antioch for 19 years. I am writing this letter to you after reading the article in the Antioch Press entitled “Antioch adopts greenhouse goals.” (Click here to read the story.)

I was very upset after reading this article that the mandates to achieve the greenhouse goals would cost California residents $4,000 per year, and small businesses nearly $50,000. The question I would like to address all of you regarding this matter is: how do you expect the residents and small businesses to pay this huge amount yearly, when all of us are struggling to survive day by day, week by week?

I do believe that global warming is a serious problem that needs to be addressed by every human being on this earth, but this is not the solution to this problem. So many people are already at the end of their rope; they are losing everything: jobs, homes, families, their dignity, and even their lives. There is no easy answer to this problem, and to assume that the American people can absorb this debt put upon us is so unjust.

If you think this is going to work, you are dead wrong. What you will see happen is the slow death of our city. Residents won’t be able to pay that added debt ($4,000) so they will lose their homes, causing them to move somewhere else. This will cause the collapse of our community; businesses that were struggling to survive will go bust. They too will leave; the end result will be a ghost town that was once was a thriving community. You can’t put the burden on the residents without having dreadful consequences.

Don’t be so quick to act. If you can’t resolve the problems that exist in this city, a $6 million budget deficit, then you shouldn’t move forward on this issue. I urge all of you to think seriously about these two greenhouse bills (AB32 and SB375) and the effect they will cause to all of us.

Who is going to benefit from these greenhouse goals if our society is destroyed in the process? The state of California won’t, neither would the country, and finally neither would the rest of the world. As a society living on this global world, every country will have to share in the responsibility to fix this problem that society has created. One country, one state, and even one city cannot fix this problem that is plaguing the world.

Look at the whole picture before you act. Are you willing to sacrifice the people that live here to obtain these goals? I sure hope not. Your responsibility to the citizens of Antioch is to protect them, not destroy them. Please do your job. Respectfully,

Sandra Baltzel, Antioch