Regarding Pope Leo
and President Trump
The April 6 Tribune-Herald contained two articles with starkly different world views.
I am not Catholic, but I must say, the views of Pope Leo (“Pope Leo calls for peace, warns of a world indifferent to violence,” April 6) resonate with me far more than what I hear coming from the White House or Department of Defense.
On Easter morning, President Trump released an obscenity-laced tirade on social media, threatening to destroy Iran’s civilian power and transportation infrastructure (“Trump sharpens threats,” April 6). This action would be in clear violation of the International Law of Armed Conflict and likely be a war crime.
Neither the threat, nor the way in which it was delivered, strike one as particularly Christian. The same can be said of the persecution of law-abiding immigrants, and American citizens mistaken for them, by the current administration.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tells Americans to “pray, on bended knee” for military victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
His attempts to cloak attacks on Iranian civilians in a mantle of piety ring hollow. They suggest that he has a very different understanding of the teachings of Jesus than Pope Leo, and most American Christians.
Indeed, a number of actions taken by Trump and Hegseth are inconsistent with the teachings of Christianity, or any interpretation of the world’s major religions, other than the most perverse.
Richard Leman
Honokaa
Honua Ola power plant
will help ‘global greening’
Much gratitude to Mr. Skip Sims of Ninole. Yes, we both want the best for our island, families, friends and neighbors, (Your Views, Feb 27).
Skip is right about using 21st century technology to meet our ever-growing energy needs, and that is why Honua Ola Bioenergy will work. The Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970 and has done wonders to clean our environment and keep it clean. Honua Ola will use state of the art 21st century technologies to meet stringent EPA particle emission regulations, measured by parts per million and even parts per billion. It will be nothing like the open field sugar cane burning of yesteryear.
It may be a stretch to say that those technologies will do for tree burning what catalytic converters do for cleaning automobile emissions, but that’s the idea.
Honua Ola will not burn fossil fuels like oil, coal or gas, and certainly not burn garbage. They will burn wood, which is organic matter. What Honua Ola releases will be mostly carbon dioxide. Plant food! Honua Ola will contribute to global greening!
To ease and even open minds about Honua Ola, I encourage everyone to search online and watch these television documentaries: “A Climate Conversation,” Heartland Institute, 2023; “Climate Change Myths,” StosselTV, 2025; and “Unsettled: Climate Change’s Real Story,” CO2 Coalition, 2026.
Glen Kagamida
Hilo
