To the editor:

The lesson from the health care debacle in the Senate is that our country wants Congress and the President to work together on bi-partisan solutions to the problems we face.

One bright spot here is the U.S. House Bi-Partisan Climate Solutions Caucus, which now has 52 members (26 Democrats and 26 Republicans) with the recent addition of our own Rep. Derek Kilmer. The Caucus is committed to finding bi-partisan solutions to address climate change.

The Olympic Peninsula, the bulk of Rep. Kilmer’s district, is already seeing the effects of rising sea levels and increasing ocean acidification. As Rep. Kilmer points out, tribal elders there remember when the ocean was a football field away. Now the waters are their front porch and it creeps closer to their homes every year.

While it is difficult or impossible to link any single event like the smoke from BC wildfires we experienced last week to climate change, climate change will increase the freq uency and intensity of wildfires — so without action, the LA-like smoky haze we had may become a new normal in August. The good news is there are bi-partisan solutions out there. Two former Reagan Administration officials, George Schulz and James Baker, have proposed a market-oriented approach that would put a price on carbon and equally rebate all proceeds to American families.

I hope Rep. Kilmer and his colleagues on the Climate Solutions Caucus will consider supporting this.

MIKE KELLY

Bainbridge Island