I was very disturbed to read in the March 21 Daily Hampshire Gazette that Cooley Dickinson Hospital is partially heating the hospital by burning wood! I am a long-term patient at the hospital. In the same issue of the Gazette was a long article from the UN on the climate change crisis. Basically, in order to survive we humans need to stop burning up things that put carbon dioxide into the air! It is a surprising idea that the hospital is creating the very diseases it treats! Air pollution causes ischemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), lung cancer and acute lower respiratory infections in children. What is the hospital thinking, burning the very thing that helps us with climate change — trees? They do a wonderful job of taking CO2 out of the air and providing the nature that we all love and appreciate. I would like to suggest the hospital investigate geothermal energy. Several of the local colleges have begun geothermal projects for their campuses. The Inflation Reduction Act and other state and federal incentives go along way to financing this old/new form of energy.
John Howard
South Hadley