Readers write
Region needs to prepare for a warming world
Atlanta’s extreme weather is intensifying in step with global climate trends. Recent storms have brought flash flooding, washed‑out roads, and widespread power outages across metro counties, revealing how vulnerable the region’s infrastructure is to severe weather.
At the same time, according to news reports, powerful thunderstorm lines in June shut down Hartsfield‑Jackson Atlanta International Airport flights and left thousands of Georgians without electricity, underscoring how even a single event can disrupt national travel and local safety.
Globally, the picture is even more alarming. July 2026 was tied as one of the warmest months ever recorded, with record land and sea temperatures driving heatwaves, drought, wildfires, and flooding across multiple continents. A rapidly intensifying El Niño is expected to amplify these extremes, pushing temperatures higher and increasing risks of heatwaves, floods, and drought worldwide.
Preparing for this new norm requires coordinated public health and environmental action: expanding cooling centers, strengthening early‑warning systems, increasing tree canopy, reducing emissions, and adopting climate‑resilience frameworks to increase resilience and preserve public health and the environment.
ERICA BIBBEY, MARIETTA
Staying in the middle hasn’t worked for Democrats
Corporate Democrats and media pundits have been furiously denigrating leftist Democrats lately. But working people have been losing ground every single day for the past 45 years, and that’s because Dems have been playing it down the political middle since Reagan.
That’s why the corporate-aligned Democratic Party has lost so many blue-collar voters and why struggling young people have no use for mainstream Democrats.
Either give working people healthcare, childcare, higher education, living wages, affordable housing and an expanded Social Security system with a real safety net, or else leave us alone and go play “Patty Cake” with your big donors. Dems have flopped epically at getting any of those things for decades because of their big donor-approved dissembling and wishy-washy incrementalism.
We see through that. We know whom you serve, and it isn’t working people. The country can easily afford these things, but if you think it’s preferable to be as callous, stingy, racist, misogynistic, hidebound, greedy, corrupt, elitist and cruel as Republicans are, then go ahead and join the Republican Party — as so many of your Southern brethren have done before.
If you can’t even endorse the principles of the New Deal, then get on the other side. Lead or leave.
DEAN POIRIER, LILBURN