Your Turn

Your Turn for December 2007

12/17/07

What's in a Name?

I think that term "climate disruption" voiced by Charles Halpern and quoted by Tom Turner is exactly right. Global warming and climate don't sound immediate enough to shock enough people into action; in fact, they sound almost warm and fuzzy, like heating up a frog slowly in a pot of water.
- Beth K.

I like "climate disruption" too. It connotes a disturbance and a new term would move people from all the politicizing of the term "global warming" which President Bush has been downplaying.
- Jeanne S.
Los Angeles, CA

Global warming, climate change, or climate disruption, as long as the message gets out. Thanks for all you do. I'm in Phoenix and would like to do more. How can I help?
- Chris B.

Tom Turner: You could get involved with one of the many activist groups (Step It Up is a favorite), write to elected representatives, send letters to the editor, phone radio talk shows. And see the answer to the next letter.

Nuclear Si? Nuclear No?

No nuclear, coal, or fossil fuel power ever again is my motto. I have mules to do farm work and am trying to scratch my pennies together to get solar and wind on my farm to power my electric needs. Also looking into wood burning stoves that are extremely efficient, just finding it hard to afford all the new technology and of course the government isn't going to help us with tax breaks or anything like that. Also growing all my own food except for grains. We all need to move quickly to more efficient ways to live independently. There is no time to dilly-dally around. Denmark is already on its way to clean energy and clean cars are on the road over there already. It's a farce that our country can't do the same. Just would hurt big oil investors too much.
- Patricia B.

Tom Turner: More power to you, Ms. B, pun intended. I wouldn't despair about government tax breaks. Some places (Berkeley and San Francisco around here) are getting ready to subsidize photovoltaic installations on house roofs. That's something positive we can urge our leaders to consider.

Nuclear power is susceptible to terrorism, its waste outlives any governmnent in history, and its total fuel cycle is far from clean. According to recent climate change studies issued by Greenpeace with analysis from the German equivalent of NASA, and another by the American Solar Energy Society with analysis conducted by the National Renewable Energy Lab, we can cut CO2 by more than half by rapid introduction of enrgy efficiency and renewable energy, thus not needing nuclear as an answer.
- Scott S.
Washington


Three big ifs: If nuclear power were not so expensive that it requires massive government subsidies, if there were some safe way to dispose of the radioactive waste, and if it were safe (from accidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and theft or sabotage by terrorists), nuclear power might be an alternative.
- Robert P.


Nuclear energy, like all other forms, has its garbage, which we haven't learned how to dispose of. Fossil fuel burning is deleterious to our atmosphere; nuclear waste can ruin our water sources with radioactive migration. Hydropower wrecks villages, natural riverbeds, and delta wetlands, and thus contributes to storm damage on top of planetary warming effects. We can't get past the laws of thermodynamics. The first law says we can't get something for nothing; the second law says we can't even break even.
- Frieda S.
retired physics teacher


San Francisco Bay

It's all well and good that people feel bad and want to do something to help [after the oil spill]. However, it's important for people to realize that this one spill is only a small part of the much larger picture of habitat destruction and degradation that's going on in the Bay Area and elsewhere, threatening far more individuals and species than were at stake in this one, relatively small, spill. (Although, to give it its due, the spill happened at just about the worst possible time of year -- in the midst of the Fall waterfowl migration period.) How do we get it through people's heads that their everyday decisions about how they live, what they buy, and where they shop affect wildlife at least as much as an equipment failure or one person's tragic misjudgment? In addition, there's also the problem of the public's "ten-minute memory" -- the fact that one week's news headlines are virtually forgotten two weeks later. It leaves me sadly disheartened about the prospect for turning around our species' increasingly rapid despoilation of the planet.
- Stuart F.
Oakland, CA


The Fence

I agree with almost everything your organization does to protect the planet we live on and I have written to our government representatives to support your efforts on many of your initiatives; however, on the border fence with Mexico, you are wrong. Our country must protect our borders and we must have our current immigration laws enforced. A fence is the only way to control this. 
- Karen G.


Terry Winckler: We don't have a position on border control. We oppose the construction of an environmentally destructive fence put up without even the consideration of alternatives such as a virtual fence concept using existing technology -- especially within the river plain.