Page 14 THE REVERE ADVOCATE – FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2024 ~ House For Rent ~ Furnished Comfortable House - Malden Very comfortable fully furnished large 3 bedroom, one family house, 1,656 ft. in Malden, near Melrose line. 15 minute drive to Boston, located on 1/2 acre lawn/forested site. Quiet neighborhood. All utilities/ Grove MBTA and Wyoming commuter rail station with direct train line to downtown Boston. Short/long term $3,500/month. Call Joe at: (857) 350-0575 I ~ GUEST COMMENTARY ~ Confessions of a Former Environmentalist: Five Reasons Why I Gave Up on “Green” Policies By Dr. Luke Conway used to be an environmentalist. I once wrote that “scientists are right about climate change.” I long opposed logging clearcuts and excessive drilling. I even voted for the Green Party candidate (gasp!) for president. But this long-time supporter of environmentalism has completely abandoned its modern instantiation. Here are fi ve reasons why. 1. Failed climate change preKeeping Older Drivers Safe on the Road Dear Savvy Senior, What safety tips can you recommend for older drivers? My 86-year-old mother, who still drives herself, had a fender bender last month and I worry about her safety. Back Seat Daughter Dear Back Seat, With more and more older Americans driving well into their 70s, 80s and beyond, there are a variety of things your mom can do to help maintain and even improve her driving skills. Here are some recommendations by driving rehabilitation specialists that work with older drivers. Get an eye exam: Because about 90 percent of the information necessary to drive is received through our eyes, this is a good fi rst step in ensuring your mom’s driving safety. So, get your mom’s eyes checked every year to be sure her vision and eyewear is up to par. Get a physical or wellness exam: As people age, it’s also very important to monitor changes in overall health as it relates to driving. Medical conditions like arthritis, dementia, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, sleep apnea and stroke can all aff ect driving. In addition, many seniors also take multiple medications or combinations of medications that can make them drowsy or lightheaded, which can impair judgment or aff ect refl exes or alertness necessary for safe driving. So, an annual physical or wellness examination and medication review is also a smart way to verify your mom’s driving safety. Take a refresher course: AARP and the American Automobile Association (AAA) both have older driver improvement courses that can help your mom brush up her driving skills and understand how to adjust for slower refl exes, weaker vision and other age-related physical changes that can aff ect driving. Taking a class may also earn her a discount on her auto insurance. To locate a class, contact your local AAA (AAA.com) or AARP (AARPdriversafety.org, 888-227-7669). Most courses cost around $20 to $30 and can be taken online. Make some adjustments: Adjusting when and where your mom drives are another way to help keep her safe and behind the wheel longer. Some simple adjustments include not driving after dark or during rush hour traffic, avoiding major highways or other busy roads, and not driving in poor weather conditions. Evaluate her driving: To stay on top of your mom’s driving abilities you should take a ride with her from time-to-time watching for problem areas. For example: Does she drive at inappropriate speeds, tailgate or drift between lanes? Does she have diffi culty seeing, backing up or changing lanes? Does she react slowly, get confused easily or make poor driving decisions? For more evaluation tips, AAA off ers a senior driver selfrating assessment exercise (Drivers 65 Plus) that you or she can access at Exchange. AAA.com/safety/senior-driver-safety-mobility. If your mom needs a more thorough evaluation, you can turn to a driver rehabilitation specialist who’s trained to evaluate older drivers and off er suggestions and adaptations to help keep her safe. But be aware that this type of assessment can run anywhere between $100 and $500 or more. To locate a professional in your area, visit ADED.net or AOTA.org — search “driving practitioner directory.” When it gets to the point that your mom’s driving isn’t safe anymore and she needs to quit, you may need to help her create a list of names and phone numbers of family, friends and local transportation services that she can call on for a ride. To fi nd out what transportation services are available in your mom’s area contact the Eldercare Locator (800-6771116), which will direct you to her area agency on aging for assistance. Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.org. Jim Miller is a contributor to the NBC Today show and author of “The Savvy Senior” book. dictions. Science is about accurate prediction. If Newton’s theory had failed to predict how apples fall, then it would be useless. Few scientists have been as bad at this (basic) job as climate scientists. In one of the most comical episodes I’ve ever seen, climate scientists erected signs in Glacier National Park predicting its glaciers would be gone in 2020—only to be forced to leave the signs after the predictions proved false. For a year, tourists to the park were met with a monument to the legacy of climate science: They stood looking simultaneously at glaciers … and the sign that promised, on the good authority of climate science, that the glaciers were not there. Increasingly, climate scientists have appeared to me not as serious intellectuals but as the crazy old coot on the corner with a sign proclaiming: “The End is Near!” At some point, it is best to just avert your eyes and walk on by. 2. Where did the wild spaces go? Thoreau said of nature: “We need the tonic of wildness.” Thoreau was right about me at least. One of my primary motives for being an environmentalist was that I believed natural wild spaces were good for the soul. I still believe that. But many modern environmentalists don’t. They have abandoned this idea and substituted in its place a cult-like obsession with a set of things that clearly won’t preserve wild spaces at all. And that brings us to wind farms. I hate wind farms. They kill birds and destroy forest habitats. The blades are made of materials that fi ll waste dumps and can’t be recycled. They require lithium batteries that have to be mined with methods that create the very kinds of problems the “clean energy” movement is supposed to solve. But for all that, my primary reason for hating wind farms is the same as my motive for opposing all those oil derricks years ago: They destroy the wild spaces of my sanity. They dilute Thoreau’s tonic. The real problem is the scope of their eff ect. An oil derrick isn’t attractive—but it is a fairly contained ugliness. Wind farms, on the other hand, ruin everyone’s view for miles and miles and miles around. The higher you go in the Pennsylvania mountains, the more you ought to feel freedom. But the higher you go, the more likely you are to have your vast wild vistas displaced by wind turbines. Even if a specifi c turbine design is attractive, it still interrupts our ever-diminishing wild spaces. So unless you happen to be a rich Massachusetts politician with the power to stop wind farms from messing up your own pristine ocean view, the tonic you get from nature will be appreciably less curative. Wind farms make oil derricks feel like pure mountain streams. Can we start drilling again soon? 3. Bullying over debate. One of the clear signs that a movement is rotten is when it resorts to silencing its opponents rather than debating them. The modern “green” movement contains the worst set of bullies I’ve ever seen; indeed, they serve as primary fodder for my forthcoming book called Liberal Bullies. Rather than meet fact with fact, the movement increasingly calls people they disagree with climate deniers and engages in intentional censorship to silence the voice of opponents. Not only is this repugnant to those of us who value free speech, but it is also a clue that the movement doesn’t have a lot of substantive arguments. You don’t need to silence people when you can win an argument with facts. 4. Politics over facts. Speaking of facts: The relationship between science and politics only works when the causal arrow between them goes from scientifi c facts to politics. The modern green movement has that backwards. I remember seeing a science presentation at a San Francisco aquarium where the speaker confi dently assertGUEST COMMENTARY | SEE Page 15
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