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June 26-July 3, 2008 editorial@boulderweekly.com
• See Jim Hightower
• See Devil's Dispatch
• See Danish Plan
Saving raptors
(RE: “Fallen Raptors,” cover story, June 19.) Thanks for your coverage of raptors and the recent health and climate catastrophes that have impacted their populations. I had no idea that West Nile virus affected birds. I’m impressed by the volunteers you interviewed in the article and glad to know that someone has stepped forward to help our feathered friends. Anyone who has watched a bald eagle soar or watched a kestrel dive for its dinner knows that these beautiful creatures are priceless. Thanks to the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program and the Birds of Prey Foundation for helping so many of them return to our skies.
Robert Gordon/Fort Collins
Your article on raptors was excellent. I loved the photograph of the owl on the cover. But the article made me wonder what good it does to save raptors’ lives and return them to the wild if we’re going to kill off their food supply. I’m speaking of the prairie dog.
Treated like vermin, they won’t be around much longer. And when the prairie dog goes, no amount of raptor rescue will bring eagles, hawks and falcons back to the Front Range.
Maria Lanham/via Internet
HIV and me
(RE: “HIV stops with you,” Uncensored, June 19.) I hope Pamela White’s column does what it was clearly intended to do — drive home to your readers that everyone is at risk for HIV infection. Getting tested for HIV is like getting your vaccines. If everyone does it, it can help to eradicate a disease. If few do it, then HIV/AIDS remains.
David Richard/via Internet
Get off oil
We all know that America is addicted to oil. This addiction plagues our health, our environment and our security. Given that two thirds of our oil comes from foreign nations leaves us open to the whims of potentially hostile foreign governments, and the combustion of oil in our vehicle chokes our skies with smog and contributes greatly to global warming.
It’s not enough to get off of foreign oil — we need to get off of oil altogether. If we are to successfully accomplish this, we need better funding for public transportation, strong conservation measures, higher fuel efficiency standards and more funding for alternative energy sources. Opening up Virginia and more of Alaska to oil drilling will not solve the problem.
These are common sense solutions, and are well within our grasp. I only hope our elected officials have the wisdom to enact them.
Alfred Leyva/Los Angeles
The deluded argument that President Bush is using to remove the ban on off-shore drilling will put America’s environment at unnecessary risk and, more importantly, will not solve the issue of reducing the current high prices of fuel.
The United States has less than 3 percent of the world’s remaining supply of oil. We will never drill our way to energy independence. Even if we allowed this drilling, it will be years before the oil is available, doing nothing to solve our current price crunch.
Each year we export close to 500 million barrels of oil, so there is no guarantee that oil drilled in the U.S. will stay here. Many of the largest oil companies are based abroad, and often sell our oil to other countries. Bush estimates there are 18 billion barrels of “drillable” oil off our shores — that’s only enough to replace our imports for four years. What then? It is the speculators who are driving the prices high, and someone is laughing all the way to the bank!
Paul Peers/via Internet
A global depression
America went the exact wrong direction in 2000 and in 2004. Bush and his ultra-right-wing, criminal/terrorist network have wasted trillions of taxpayer dollars on the military state-security complex and on the needless mass surveillance of the citizenry. This administration has created a sprawling prison-industrial system that houses 30 percent of the world’s prison population and has spawned a genocidal war in the Middle East that has cost the lives of up to 2 million innocent Iraqi men, women and children.
If Al Gore had been president — and he won the presidency back in 2000 — we would have been well on our way to solving the supreme international security threat of global warming. Most likely, we would have evolved into a more European type of economy of small cars, more efficient transportation grids and more intelligently designed, green ecologically oriented living environments.
But now, all that is lost, and the dollar is crashing. Idiot Americans drive around in 10 mpg SUVs at $4 a gallon. A glut of Keystone cops run around spying and surveilling us at every turn. Our food and water are filled with cancer-causing chemicals and fluoride, giving us terminal diseases, while enlarging the coffers of the health, medical and pharmaceutical industries.
Meanwhile the entire U.S. financial system is tanking. We’ll be lucky if we make it through the summer without a major financial collapse, plunging us into a global depression!
Matt Browning/Blue River, Colo.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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