Climate and Bags
Dear Editor: Wow, Houston is getting slammed again and there are six storms on the way. Hurricane season is on the way. If it isn’t hurricane season, it is fire burning across the globe and drought.
Climate change just sped up due to the unforeseen occurrence of the permafrost melting and releasing loads and loads of methane into the atmosphere. So predictions of how long we would have to try and turn climate change around just went out the window with the blasts of methane that are getting pumped into the atmosphere. The planet will survive this but life on the planet may not. Drastic changes have to occur immediately when it comes to our contribution to this problem. The only way these drastic changes toward cleaning our atmosphere can occur is with government mandating severe carbon reduction.
Right now our federal government is being controlled by ignorant immature people who only think about themselves and we cannot rely on help until people stand up and demand responsible government. But state government can step up and many of them are. California along with some other states has set higher standards for vehicle pollution, saying they cannot wait for the federal government to act.
Alaska’s governor has gone “off the rails” completely and says, “climate change may be good for Alaska” as our state burns, drought causes water shortages, fish are disappearing, an ice sheet falls off and villagers have to go chase their winter food that is on the disappearing ice. To make matters worse, Russia, who is nuclear accident-prone, invades Arctic waters with TWO nuclear REACTORS on a ship and parks it like they have a right to do it. No one, no one, governor, state Legislature, and-or our U.S. Congress has done anything about it! The corruption is mind boggling.
As the craziness surrounds us, the only comfort that we can have is that we live in a community that works everyday to support each other and protect the environment. We are actively trying to cut our carbon footprint by using hydropower, riding bikes, walking, driving electric cars, saving our forests, keeping our beaches, creeks, and ocean clean to help our salmon, deer, goats, birds and microscopic life healthy.
We are very concerned about ocean pollution because our fish are a high priority to us. Plastic in the ocean is dangerous to us not only because the fish (researchers see copepods eating microplastics) are life to us, but because microplastics in a developing child can cause severe hormonal changes that cause deformities that cannot be reversed. In Sitka, children are our future and we treasure them as we all raise them together.
In many ways we feel powerless here to change the rest of the world. Sitka is not dumping tons of plastic in the ocean, but it washes upon our beaches. We are taking this powerless feeling and making an effort to change our behavior and reduce our use of single use bags and voting on it on Oct. 1. This is who we are. This is one of the many ways we are changing to save life on this planet.
Believe me, more drastic changes are coming in the future. Some people in town are still learning how to change and why we need to change so they are protesting this effort. I believe the people who will survive this climate change train, will be people who band together to help each other stay close to the earth. This is not a time to fight each other. It is like we are walking down a slippery slope closer to where the air cannot fill our lungs. We have a choice to stop and turn around and head back up the slippery slope. If we are fighting we are distracted from what we must do. Stop. Turn. Around. On the way back, we don’t fight each other for footing, we reach out and take our neighbor’s hand, and we all pull together to make it to the top one step at a time. Vote YES to band single use plastic bags a step for the health of our children and our fish. A step toward a possible future on our planet. This not about our right to have a free plastic grocery bag, this about our power to control the health of life in Sitka and on this planet.
Gunalcheesh for all you do to keep Sitka healthy,
Patricia Dick, Sitka
No to Bag Ban
Dear Editor: I have a concern regarding the proposed plastic bag ban that will be decided in the upcoming municipal election.
Our grocery stores go to great lengths to keep their stores and our food supply as clean as possible.
Plastic grocery bags are a sanitary way to transport food from the store to our refrigerators, but I can’t say the same for reusable bags that each shopper will bring into the stores time after time after they have been riding around on the floor of the car along with the dog and a pair of muddy Xtratufs.
I applaud the nobility of the plastic bag ban, but I am just as concerned about the unintended consequence of introducing unnecessary and uncontrolled contamination into our food supply.
Hugh Bevan, Sitka
Banned Books
Dear Editor: All over the country, kids are starting a new school year and teachers are sending out lists of required readings. It some cases, classics like “The Color Purple,” “The Catcher in the Rye,” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” won’t be included in curriculum or available in the school library due to challenges made by parents or administrators.
The freedom to read is essential to our democracy, and it is continuously under attack. Since 1990, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (ALA, OIF) has recorded more than 10,000 book challenges, including 347 in 2018. A challenge is a formal, written complaint requesting a book be removed from library shelves or school curriculum. About half of all challenges take place in schools or school libraries, and one in four are in public libraries. The Office for Intellectual Freedom estimates that less than one-quarter of challenges are reported and recorded, so the true numbers are likely much higher.
It is thanks to the commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, and students that most challenges are unsuccessful and beloved reading materials like “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” “Slaughterhouse Five,” and the Harry Potter series remain available.
Challenges are not merely an expression of a point of view; on the contrary, they are an attempt to remove materials from public use, thereby restricting the access of others. Even if the motivation to ban or challenge a book is well intentioned, the outcome is detrimental. Censorship denies the freedom of individuals to choose and think for themselves. Children and adults alike have the right to access information freely, and that choice shouldn’t be taken from them.
In support of our right to choose books freely for ourselves, the American Library Association and Sitka Public Library are celebrating Banned Books Week, an annual recognition of our right to access books without censorship.
Since its inception in 1982, Banned Books Week has reminded us that while not every book is intended for every reader, each of us has the right to decide for ourselves what to read. Sitka Public Library, along with thousands of colleges, schools, libraries, and bookstores across the country, will celebrate the freedom to read by showcasing books that have been banned or threatened. Come to the library September 23-27 to check out our Banned Books Display, where can you check out a banned book for yourself, find information on why books have been banned or challenged, and write letters to your favorite banned authors.
Ray Bradbury wrote, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” Take a stand against censorship and celebrate your freedom to read by participating in Banned Books Week!
Margot O’Connell,
Adult Services Librarian,
Sitka Public Library
Climate Change
Dear Editor: Kathryn Hayhoe, a climate scientist, a professor in the department of political science at Texas Tech University, director of the Climate Center and evangelical Christian, was just named Climate Champion of the Earth by the United Nations. Here’s what she said yesterday. “The award offers real encouragement to those of us working every day to spread the message that climate change is real and that we need to act now to deal with it. Together, keeping up the pressure, we can prevail, because we already have the technology and knowledge to make the necessary changes; all we’re missing is the will,” Hayhoe said. (https://youtu.be/CptBBAxd928)
I had the opportunity to hear Kathryn twice last week while attending the ONE PLANET, ONE FAMILY conference sponsored by Alaska Interfaith Power & Light.
She spoke at UAS to an audience of community members, faculty and students and then again at Chapel by the Lake to people of faith wooing both packed facilities. I had listened to her before on a Citizens Climate Lobby education call, and I wasn’t disappointed. She’s a powerful advocate for the planet and a force to be reckoned with. She persuasively used the metaphor of our planet as a human body when addressing what’s the big deal of a 2 degree increase in temperature on the planet. Well for us humans, it’s the difference of a 98.6 and 100.6 temperature. It clearly indicates that we are sick; it’s not different for our planet. The planet has a fever, it’s going up and she’s getting sicker the longer we go without enacting policies that effectively bring down carbon emissions and sequester carbon from the atmosphere.
Kathryn also talked about the Genesis passage (NRSV verse 1:28) in the Bible which reads ... God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Kathryn pointed out that the word dominion comes from the Greek word, radah. It means to be responsible for; it’s a ruling or rule. The words, abad – to cultivate and shamar – to protect, keep, guard – also come up in the passage depending on the version you are reading. So basically, the Maker is directing humanity to take responsibility for, to cultivate and care for the Creation. We’ve fallen terribly, terribly short and now, planetary health and human health are in jeopardy. As she so eloquently said, “It’s climate changed not climate change.”
So what to do? We’ll here’s a short list:
Support youths striking for the climate today and on Tuesday, Sept. 24, at Sitka High School at 11:30 a.m.
Call Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and ask them to join the newly forming Climate Solutions Caucus in the Senate that Sen. Coons (Democrat from Delaware) and Sen. Braun (Republican from Indiana) created.
Call Rep. Don Young and ask him to sign on to the bipartisan, HR 763 – The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act – the best first step to curb carbon emissions.
If you are a business owner or congregation, endorse HR 763 at https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbon-dividend-act/.
Look at your own carbon footprint at www.footprintcalculator.org. What changes can you make? Collectively, all our actions add up.
For the love of Creation,
Lisa Sadleir-Hart, Sitka
