Letters to the Editor
human power
Published Letters: 91 Editor's Choice: 26
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not the govt., just its master
[Read the article: Think censor: Apple's lawyers shut down rumor site]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We have entered a realm that the founding fathers could not have imagined. Corporations now completely control our government. Unfortunately, our Constitution was only designed to attempt to protect us from an overreaching government, not its corporate masters. Sure, Apple won under the rules of the game, but the game is rigged in its favor. With the loss of our public spaces to privatization, our education system to underfunding, our airwaves to half a dozen large corporations and, soon, the net neutrality of the internet, the typical American doesn’t even have the tools to protest even if s/he can determine what to protest. Welcome to the third world, American style.
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There is nothing Eco about Driving
[Read the article: How to get better gas mileage]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Oh come on. Using the term “eco-driving is like using the term “healthful toxic waste”. Sure, it is better to get the best gas mileage possible on those occasions when one must drive. But let’s face it; most driving is done not out of necessity but out of choice (and laziness).
On a scale of appropriate guilt for unsustainable behavior, if lead-footed driving is 100, then being a “hypermiler” is at least 90. All cars drive bikes and peds off of the road and thus lead to increased production of toxic waste by others in addition to what is produced by the driver in question. Get real. Get sustainable. Get out of the car. Future generations will thank you for it.
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If you cover all campaigns?
[Read the article: Candidates beware -- I'm on the beat]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This looks good for Gore vs. Bloomburg this November.
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Fossil-Fools drop Eco-Bomb
[Read the article: The year in the environment]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is so sad that my fellow Americans want to wish and pray away the impacts of our energy-intensive lifestyle choices. Perhaps this is the result of our disinvestment in public education, particularly in the sciences; we no longer think. Even without the slow-motion catastrophe of global warming, we would eventually have to change our lazy ways. Only so much solar energy is captured by plants on Earth, and this captured energy accounts for ALL of our energy stocks. We have been drawing down the “reserve” that was created prior to our species existence for the past one and one-half centuries. When the prospect of depleting energy pools one at a time for the next couple of centuries was considered the extent of the problem, we could live with the notion that we have the time to allow technology to solve our energy use problem.
That is no longer the case. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when people advocate hybrid or electric cars as solutions to global warming. When the conservative estimate is that we have 40 years to cut back our emissions by half in spite of an anticipated doubling of our population it should be obvious to anyone that nibbling around the edges with slightly improved fuel mileages or using (mostly coal-fired) electric cars just won’t cut it. The use of fossil-fool driven devices is nothing short of an ecological bomb we are dropping on future generations. What are we thinking? We are killing off the planet’s ability to support life just so we won’t have to wear sweaters indoors or ride a bike when it is 100 F or ride a bus with “undesirables”.
I’m sure many readers will write in with all of the usual excuses for why they cannot possibly live without county-sized carbon footprints, but humanity must either live sustainably or join the extinction. Right now, America’s use of absurd amounts of energy is choosing extinction for everyone.
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But are they worse?
[Read the article: Women are "worst drivers"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Females may not be inherently worse drivers than males, and I am aware of no data to suggest that they are involved in more injury-wrecks per mile of driving than males, but I have had some experiences that make me wonder.
After having several occasions to demonstrate my skill at surviving car-bike interactions in which the driver of the car had two X chromosomes, I began to seek an explanation for why women seemed to be less capable than men of observing a bicyclist (I’m a very large person and was often struck in residential districts while riding on a tandem with my son and two large red panniers on the back. We were nearly as large as some European cars.) I noticed that the drivers who either ran into me or nearly ran into me were often either on their cell phones or had earbuds in place. Since I walk around town a great deal, I began counting and noting the gender of the people who were driving-while-cellphoning. Not surprisingly, in more than two-thirds of the cars driven by people on cell phones, the driver was female. Since several studies have shown that driving while on a cell phone is worse than drunk driving in terms of the driver’s reaction time and ability to recognize hazards, this is a possible explanation for my personal negative experiences with car-bound women.
Before someone jumps all over me, I do recognize that it may have been the result of a small sample size in terms of my negative car-bike interactions (7or 8) and thus may mean nothing. Also, since I was only counting the cars driven by cell phone users it is possible that more cars were being driven by females when the count was made. That said, I still have to wonder…