LETTERS
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AN EASIER EXISTENCE
Tax incentives to the ultra wealthy Chicago Board of Trade so they won’t leave? (“Cap City,” Aug. 20) Where will they go with a name like that? Toledo? The museum slowly and quietly being shut down after major grass roots condemnation of this action as ridiculous and unacceptable? Of course it is. One example after the other of ludicrous thinking in Illinois.
I am here in Springfield because my parents need some attention. Also, after living in the west for 40 years, I wanted to try my old hometown again. Buy property, start a business. It is beautiful here. The scenery, people, architecture, spoken values, history, etc. are fantastic. But everything you try to do in Illinois requires a form, a fee, insurance, three types of identification, permission from a doctor, letters of reference – and that is just to set up at a craft fair for five hours one Saturday. Why is everything so complicated and exclusive? The state income tax form is unspeakable. It is very hard to choose Springfield or Illinois when bureaucracy has muddied every drop of existence. The bull excrement tolerance of longtime citizens must be phenomenal. I am impressed but unable to meet such high local standards.
Please, can’t we try to make it easier to exist here? Sue Anderson Springfield
WISHFUL THINKING
In response to Hellner’s two letters asking why our temperatures stopped increasing from 1945 to 1976, (“Letters,” Aug. 6 and 13), NASA cites aerosols as a key factor in this shift.
Dr. Nadine Unger states that aerosols emitted during the industrial revolution were cited as holding global temperatures steady. While that is momentarily exciting, please know that “aerosols affect other parts of the climate system like rainfall,” reducing rain in areas like India and China where it is desperately needed for food production, “and they alter patterns of wind and atmospheric circulation. Also, soot has done just the opposite. Soot, particularly diesel exhaust pollution, accounts for more than one-fourth of the total hazardous pollution in the air. Diesel exhaust is also connected to lung and cardiovascular damage.”
I would praise Hellner for taking the time to examine the planet’s history in warming and would encourage him to go beyond his focus on that short period when temperatures held steady. Furthermore, charts demonstrate that global warming has never been a straight shot upward but a gradual weaving up and down with an overall rise at each peak. Imagine a wavy diagonal at a 45-degree upwards angle. One is encouraged to ignore this overall picture to avoid making changes that involve sacrifice. The key ones to suffer will be fossil fuel companies and they are fighting hard. Please remember how they continue to record massive profits and yet still receive enormous tax subsidies from us while dumping high fuel prices on us at the pump. Our resistance of shifting our support to renewables highlights America’s bad habit of attachment to convenience, of avoiding the hard choices, avoiding change.
Our earth’s system is beautifully complex. How could we possibly assume that our population of 8 billion and counting has not had an affect on it? We depend on this system to keep us alive, to feed us, to give us the air to breathe. Coal does not produce oxygen; trees are basically what keep this planet going. Throwing our efforts into increasing our tree canopy to fight the increasing carbon level, redirecting our taxes from fossil fuels to non-toxic energy sources and reducing our massive drain on our fresh water supply are simple, direct paths of action. Plant trees on your plot of land, private or commercial, reduce your water and energy waste, reduce disposables in your daily lifestyle. One person isn’t much, but multiply it by 8 billion? It’s a massive impact.
Change is inconvenient, frightening and costly, but so is standing idle while your house is on fire and your children are inside. Think about it. Anne Logue Springfield
