Received a letter from Nick LaLota regarding his refusal to hold in-person town halls. He said, "I don't do Political Theatrics."
Town halls are not theatrics. Since 1633, it's been a physical place where townspeople and politicians meet to hear topics of interest or to discuss specific legislation. They afford ACTIVE political debate about what constituents like or dislike about her/his votes. The debate may become LIVELY, but THAT IS PART OF THE JOB.
He says his door remains open. What good is "an open door" to an empty office. It seems as if we never get an answer from him, be it surveys he promised to publish or to inquiries on his Facebook page.
Radio appearances DENY his constituents the give and take they require. We deserve better than screened questions and scripted answers.
We also see that he meets with small groups that are never advertised on his Congressional Facebook page so that people like us can attend. He needs to meet with working families at NIGHT, not for a rare or occasional photo op, but on a regular basis to listen and truly hear what is being said. He says he's bothered by those confronting him with INCONVENIENT truths and posters OUTSIDE his office.
Thomas Paine's words of centuries ago once again ring true, "These are the times that try men's souls." Indeed! Nick LaLota is in hiding in Amityville. Does he support a presidency that is closer to George III than George Washington? Come meet us. Show us RESPONSE- ABILITY!
In the last week or so, a number of yard signs have appeared in Stony Brook, urging the Ward Melville Heritage Association to repair the dam on Mill Pond that was destroyed over a year ago. Like many of my fellow village residents, I am frustrated by the lack of action and the appearance of indifference displayed by the association. I realize that the issues involved with repairing the dam are difficult and complex and I am confident that many steps have been taken to analyze and solve these issues.
I am sure that the WMHO cares about our community and they work hard to maintain and improve our village in addition to providing many civic activities that benefit us all. Nevertheless, the delay and lack of action regarding this important project is intolerable and the inertia feeds the sense of cynicism that corrodes our faith in government's ability and desire to act on the public's behalf.
At the very least, the WMHO should be more visible and proactive in keeping the community informed while working toward a solution to repair and restore the dam, the pond and surrounding properties. Good governance and public trust are important on the local level. Please work vigorously and openly on our community's behalf.
In yet another letter Mark Sertoff continues his crusade against renewable energy. While there's not enough space to address in detail each of Mr. Sertoff's false or misleading claims, here's a few highlights.
The primary driver of increased energy costs in Europe (I don't know where he gets his 600% figure) is not reliance on renewables, but the cutoff of cheap Russian gas precipitated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Yes, backup energy batteries have their dangers. So does gas, which can and does explode, oil which has to be transported and can and does leak, sometimes in vast spillages, and nuclear which can and does emit dangerous radiation when an accident occurs.
There is zero evidence that offshore wind turbines have caused even a single whale beaching or death. The largest causes of whale mortality are ships that hit them and entanglements in fishing nets. As for offshore wind turbines causing ship collisions, you might as well also say bridges cause ship collisions.
There's no scientific evidence that wind turbines are the largest cause of either raptor or bat deaths. For bats that dubious distinction belongs to white-nose syndrome, a deadly and highly contagious fungal disease.
The claim that the overall life cycle of renewables causes more harm than that of fossil fuels is extremely doubtful. There's mountaintop removable for coal. There's the damage caused by fracking. There's the transport of coal, oil, gas and LNG hundreds of miles, manufacture of the steel and polyethylene used to build pipelines, offshore oil drilling, etc., etc.
Mr. Sertoff's concerns about child labor would be more properly directed toward the current administration in Washington that canceled dozens of USAID and other federal programs designed to combat child labor rather than toward renewable energy.
The claim that data underlying climate models is skewed upward by temperatures taken at airports or cities is bogus. Since 1978 worldwide climate data has been largely based on Advanced Very-High-Resolution Radiometry from satellites first put into orbit that year. A single satellite can make 425 million temperature observations a day. That means that for almost every square kilometer of Earth we've had at least one daily temperature reading since 1978.
The claim that polar ice sheets, glaciers and coral reefs are stable or increasing is the opposite of the truth.
Look, I share Mr. Sertoff's nostalgia for a lost world of 60 years ago, when the Beach Boys could unironically extol the delights of a brand new 409, while nearby Los Angeles choked in daily smog produced mainly by internal combustion engines. But the world of today is not that world. It was largely uninformed of the consequences of pumping approximately 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every single day (today the figure is over 100 million metric tons). The excuse for inaction back then might have been blissful ignorance. But today there's absolutely no excuse for denying the price of recklessly continuing on our not-so-merry way.
Almost every point in Mark Sertoff's letter last week, "Renewable energy and Europe" (Village Times Herald, Aug, 21), is either false, misleading, disingenuous or too vague to address. In any case, his arguments appear to be standard propaganda from the fossil fuel industry.
Point 7, which claims that climate change is a global scientificconspiracy, is plainly false. This point is crucial because no one would be advocating for alternative energy sources so urgently if the effects of climate change were not clear and devastating. Thirty years ago, questioning climate science might have been plausible; today, it is simply absurd. Anyone over the age of 45 has personally witnessed these changes. For example, summers in North America are now about two weeks longer than they were in 1980.
All the concerns raised about the ecological and social impacts of renewable energy industries are disingenuous. The current fossil fuel economy has caused far greater environmental damage over many decades.
Are we to believe that oil and gas executives and shareholders genuinely care about issues like child labor in the developing world, animal deaths or habitat destruction?
Why are "fossil" and "nuclear" mentioned together repeatedly? Because nuclear energy does not contribute to climate change, and therefore it naturally aligns with wind and solar in these discussions. However, nuclear power is not intermittent. Nor is hydropower, which is conveniently omitted. These sources weaken the arguments that alternative energy cannot ensure a reliable energy supply, so they mustbe disassociated with alternatives.
Regarding other countries' actions, China installed more solar capacity last year than the entire current capacity of the United States. Has China been duped by the so-called Green Dream or the liberal agenda?
The breathless panic over "shivering" and "pipes freezing" suggests that anyone is proposing a complete shift to wind and solar energy alone. No one is advocating this. All experts and policymakers support a hybrid, incremental transition that grows a profitable green energy economy while gradually reducing reliance on the most damaging fossil fuels.
As I have argued previously in these pages, if radical free-market fundamentalists -- who believe everything should be left to unregulated business -- disagree with collective action against global climate change, they should openly make that case. However, they must drop the pretenses and honestly admit that the rest of us will suffer heavy climate-related costs to maintain their corporate profits.
The opinions of columnists and letter writers are their own. They do not speak for the newspaper.
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