Bust out sun block
In Paul Krugman’s op-ed “Doomed to climate catastrophe?” he plays a game of show and tell; he’s telling me everything, but showing me nothing. Krugman’s opining that we are all fried bacon by our own hand seems ridiculous. Guess what, Krugman, we are all to be char-broiled regardless of “if we don’t act,” or not.
You see, Earth’s problem is that in roughly 1 billion years the sun will begin to expand, causing Earth’s oceans to boil away, making this planet a dry, hot, uninhabitable ball — with 6.6 billion years of lifeless orbiting before our red giant sun gobbles us up in a blaze of glory.
The alarmists trying to figure out how to cool Earth should figure out how to cool the sun. Perhaps we should send that Coors Light train; it seems to chill everything in its wake.
Levity aside, if we make it another billion years, that would be amazing considering 99.9 percent of all species that have ever existed on Earth have gone extinct. The “Big Five” major extinctions documented in Earth’s 4.5 billion year history (along with many minor ones) seem to put Krugman’s “loaded dice” analogy where it belongs — on a craps table. Global warming has been attributed to some extinction periods, and so has global cooling. It seems pretty maniacal that humans believe we can alter Earth’s natural rhythms.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t be good stewards of Earth while she’s around; I want a survivable climate for our families, just as any rational person would. However, like alcohol in large quantities will eventually kill you, and global warming (or cooling) will surely kill our species — I’m still going to crack open a Silver Bullet at barbecues and drive a SUV you don’t have to plug in.
Mike Caputo
Keaau
A call to artists
With what happened recently in Aurora, Colo., as an artist, I feel compelled to make a plea.
We have so little time here in this life on Earth. It goes by quickly. As artists, we can depict and promote peace and nonviolence, or we can profit from glorifying war and horror. A lot of Hollywood’s movies, recent “Batmans” included, seems to profit from glorifying violence and brutality. To me and most of you artists, the choice seems clear, but how can we get society at large to appreciate and encourage positive, uplifting arts?
I invite all of us artists to devote a big chunk of our output to furthering positive causes. Maybe, during this short time we have on Earth, we, as artists of all kinds — painters, musicians, actors and movie-makers and dancers, etc. — can have a pacifying impact on society. With our children and grandchildren in mind, why do otherwise?
Join us, and reject violence as a means to achieve solutions, and choose to depict positive and progressive themes in your art, music, games, movies and life. Peace and love.
Ken Charon
Kurtistown
Defining marriage
Marriage recognizes a “natural procreative capacity” of opposite-sex couples, providing an incentive for couples to stay together and raise their children, argued Dale Schowengerdt, an attorney representing Hawaii Family Forum (Tribune-Herald, July 25).
If this is the logic being put forth to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, does that mean that those opposite-sex couples who do not possess the “natural procreative capacity” due to infertility or old age should be denied the option of marriage and allowed a civil union?
How will that work? Will opposite-sex couples have to be tested for fertility of both parties to ensure they possess the “natural procreative capacity,” before the marriage license is allowed? Sounds kind of scary to me.
Don Jacobs
Keaau
Just build it
It’s a few days to the primary, and NOW Mayor Billy Kenoi comes out in favor of “looking into” a trash-to-energy plant? Must be election jitters.
I presume that Hawaii County has a file cabinet somewhere with all the expensive research and planning notes on the 2008 incinerator that was voted down by the County Council. Instead of spending more money “researching the problem,” the county should send some one to the file room for the records and call the vendor from 2008 to start building.
Float a bond issue to pay for the incinerator. The state and the feds if they want to chip in. Just do it. If we had started building in 2008, the incinerator could be up and running by now.
And just so you know, many communities are mining their old dumps for fuel to generate electricity and to clean up the environment.
Remember, as has been proven in Connecticut and other states, the only byproduct of the incinerator is clean water vapor — no smells, no toxins, no nothing. Let’s ignore the NIMBY (“not in my back yard) and CAVE (“citizens against virtually everything”) minority and get started. Or, do you want your kids growing up on an island covered with trash and drinking contaminated water from dump runoff?
Linda Dusek Ravenell
Keaau
