Optimism needed
Thanks for Nancy Cook Lauer’s report, “It does have the force of kuleana” (Tribune-Herald, Oct. 2).
Many thanks also to the 50 members of the public who showed up in support of a nonbinding resolution acknowledging the “existence of a climate emergency,” and to our council members who moved the resolution forward to the full council.
We need the courage of optimism. As President Kennedy said a decade before we landed on the moon, “We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
Climate change is the existential challenge of our time. Having the “climate conversation” can help overcome hopelessness and fear.
The nonpartisan Hawaii Island Chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby provides information, optimism and focus on an effective climate solution and welcomes all who are serious about finding a way to minimize our current and future climate disruptions.
Please join us. Visit citizensclimatelobby.org.
Ron Reilly
Volcano
Trump vs. Clinton
Here are the differences between President Trump and President Clinton regarding impeachment.
Clinton’s economy was 4.8% growth in 1999. Trump’s economy is at 2.0% growth in 2019.
Clinton had a balanced budget. Trump’s budget deficit has soared — up 27% for the first 10 months of this fiscal year alone — and is now back in trillion-dollar land in the first 11 months.
Clinton had approval ratings in the 60s. Approval of Trump has never budged beyond the mid-40s.
Clinton never did anything to harm America, and was ultimately facing impeachment for having an affair behind his wife’s back and trying to hide it. Trump has affairs with sex workers while his many wives stayed home with their children.
And Trump did something far worse than committing adultery. Trump has weakened America, in many ways, in the eyes of our long-standing allies and those who would try to harm us.
Trump has gone up against Kim Jong Un, the Muslim prince of Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Vladimir Putin, and Trump has lost every time.
Even a 16-year-old girl from Sweden, Greta Thunberg, beat Trump easily.
The only good thing Trump has done was to get the bad people among us to take off the mask of humanity they wear as a disguise (while putting on their Putin puppet hats) so that we see them all for who they are: fake Christians, fake patriots and fake Americans.
Putin loves his useful idiots.
Dennis Chaquette
Keaau
