Addressing Environmental Issues

The following open letter is intended for my environmentally conscious friends on the political left as well as my many conservative neighbors who don’t subscribe to global warming, i.e., climate change, predictions.

First, let me start with a fact: None of us, including President Trump, knows what the Earth’s landscape will look like 100 years from now. It either is going to look a lot like it does today or many coastlines will be under water. Scientists can show us models of how things may look in 2117, but they are only projections.

That said, what if half of their guesses are correct? Wouldn’t that put much of Hawaii, Washington’s Bainbridge Island or the Outer Banks of the Carolinas in jeopardy of being dramatically changed or destroyed? Of course, the flip side is nothing much would change except there could be new ocean front properties to develop.

Being an observer of human nature, I’ve come to the conclusion that open-minded people tend to embrace change, while their counterparts prefer things to remain as they are. When it comes to the environment, the problem people in both camps face is an always-present, unpredictable nature. This is especially true when you are trying to predict the outcome of events 100 years from now.

I realize it’s next to impossible to say what life will be like a century from now, but let me add one last fact to the discussion: Most people living today never will live on another planet between now and 2117. That said, aren’t we all obligated, one way or another, to leave our children and grandchildren a healthy, flourishing Earth?

From my perspective, this can only begin to happen if people from both the left and right agree to sit down and work together on their shared environmental interests.

I believe Andrew Liveris, who happens to be the chief executive officer of Dow Chemical and the chairman of Trump’s manufacturing council, would agree. Here’s how he reacted to the president’s statement about withdrawing from the Paris climate accord last week: “Leaders don’t leave tables, leaders stay.”

Who’s ready to join Liveris and me at the table?

From Denny Freidenrich, Laguna Beach, Calif.

President Trump’s intransigent foe

We are in a civil war between a transient elected government and the permanent government of bureaucrats in our civil service and intelligence agencies. The shock and awe of this struggle has become front-page, above-the-fold news since the Trump administration took office and leaks to anti-Trump media began. The “deep state” had been relatively quiescent during the Obama era, eight years of policy comity between the elected and shadow governments separating two Republican administrations.

That unelected apparatchiks of the permanent bureaucracy wield the power to delay, derail and deny prerogatives of the government elected by the people and do so in secret and with encouragement of opposition politicians and media should give us all pause. Some of this activity is illegal, not that media favored by leakers cares.