To the editor:

Listening this week to an NPR interview of Nathaniel Rich, the author of the new book “Losing Earth,” I found myself — not uncharacteristically, I must admit — filled with dread. The content of the radio show was, I’ll give you, disturbing, but I was startled at the intensity of my anxiety.

Climate change is an issue not easily comprehended.

I amend my last statement; it is easily understood, but it is less easily felt. It is all too easy, even for those of us who trust in science, to hold ourselves at a distance from the issue; our country currently suffers from, as Paul Farmer would term it, a general anesthesia of the soul.

And, so, as I ponder the immense and (very) possibly eschatological issue of climate change, I wonder how I can possibly do enough. And so I find myself writing this, considering the near futility of anything I have the power to do at age 17, thinking of how small an impact this letter to a local paper can have. But I still write — I feel compelled to do something, and this is what I have the power to do. And it may be small, but I believe it is not unimportant, just as your actions, I hope, will not fail to materialize because you fear the futility of one person’s rebellion.

So now, I beg of you, act.

PETRA ELLERBY

Poulsbo