Letter from the president.

• Author: Kassel, John
• Position: CONSERVATION MATTERS

Dear CLF Friends,

Forty years later, would we pass the Clean Water Act (CWA) today? It's a question that Christopher Kilian, Director of our Clean Water and Healthy Forests program, recently asked on the 40th anniversary of that ambitious and forward-thinking law. It's a version of a question that I've asked myself many times: can we do today what needs to be done now?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Fifty years ago the world was gripped by the Cuban Missile Crisis. The mindset that most American baby-boomers grew up with-the entire world could change very drastically and permanently, during our lifetime if not during the afternoon-is still embedded in our psyches.

We need to tap that well of concern, now. The world is changing dramatically. Everybody who goes outside knows that. Unlike the destruction-in-a-flash that many of us grew up imagining, it's now change-with-in-a-decade, or change-by-next-growing-season. And we're not imagining it. We're experiencing it.

Take the event of Hurricane Irene, featured in this issue. Predictions from climate scientists are that severe storms-perhaps as severe as...