Letters for September 19, 2019

Speak up on climate

Worried about the climate? This Friday (Sept. 20) is the Worldwide Climate Strike. Support climate action by showing up at 11 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Chico City Plaza. Use your superpowers to support action.

Most importantly: Stop the polite silence. We have to talk about this. As much as possible—with everyone. If you don’t do anything else, please do that! Be public. How? Take a selfie with a hand-held sign, then post it on Facebook, Instagram, etc. Use #ActOnClimate #ButteStrong to make searching easy and help us to show the faces of concerned people to our politicians.

Phone your representative once a month. Sign up with ProjectGrandCanyon.com to be reminded by text or email. Go to EnvironmentalVoter.org to prove environmentalists can vote. Pledge to vote and be a superhero.

Julie Heath

Chico

Protect the kids

Re “Cannabis to council” (Newslines, by Meredith J. Cooper) and “More common sense, less emotion” (Editorial, Sept. 12):

Who is the most “vulnerable” in our city? Is it the young children walking our streets or the homeless in our midst?

Our Chico City Council has been listening to rooms full of kind-hearted, well-meaning Chico residents. This liberal-dominated council in just a few short months will bring pot shops for recreational marijuana use to a store near you. Oh, yes—they’ll be sure to require a 1,000-foot “buffer zone” around our schools (as though our schoolchildren don’t walk that distance—and more—to and from schools).

Next up for us living in Chico is the needle distribution proposal. Remember, it’s not exchange, it’s distribution! How is this endeavor going to reduce harm to our children who’ll be targeted as potential customers for IV abusers? Needles in our playgrounds, parks and streets.

It’s not a family-first agenda for our current City Council!

I ask again: Who is the most vulnerable population in Chico? This current council, save for two, should all be recalled. Keep Chico from becoming a drug mecca. Sign the recall petitions or email RecallStone&Ory@gmail.com.

Loretta Ann Torres

Chico

Editor’s note: The Northern Valley Harm Reduction Coalition’s efforts, including its naloxone distribution, are funded not locally but by the state of California.

Green angle missed

Re “Across enemy lines” (Chow, by Jason Cassidy, Sept. 5):

I appreciate the attention given to Burger King’s new Impossible Whopper, as part of a review of recent arrivals on the local fast-food scene, but it seems the article is missing an important point.

The great value of products like the Impossible Whopper is offering alternatives to consumers who crave fast food such as burgers, but without the undesired impacts of raising animals for food. The reviewer admits the “beef” patty tastes fine on its own, much like a real fast-food burger. But the comparison truly stops there.

Production of the Impossible Burger avoids most of the consumptive processes of beef production, which is notorious for using prodigious quantities of water and energy, not to mention the release of heat-trapping greenhouse gases responsible for a major portion of human-caused climate change. As I understand it, the mission of the developer of the Impossible Burger (Impossible Foods) was to offer a sustainable and humane alternative to meat for the average consumer.

The Popeyes’ chicken sandwich does not provide that alternative.

Don Miller

Chico

The Donald golfs

In July of 64 A.D., a great fire ravaged Rome for six days, destroying 70 percent of the city and leaving half its population homeless. History recounts Nero fiddling while Rome burned; the actions of an ineffectual leader in a time of crisis.

As Hurricane Dorian bore down on the Bahamas and the eastern shore of the United States, Donald Trump did not fiddle; instead, he golfed. Displaying his own brand of ineffectual leadership, he helicoptered between his luxury golf resorts in New Jersey and Virginia, with cameo stopovers at Camp David. Meanwhile, tens of thousands lost their life’s identity and were left homeless and destitute, and the death toll in the Bahamas is rising.

There are people who say those that tear down Trump hate America. Not so. We hate what he is doing to America: diminishing its status in the world; destroying policies that protect our environment; showing disregard for people who don’t fit the mold of what his tiny brain believes are true Americans.

Trump cares not for the well-being of America, but only for the power it has given him, and how he can use it to enrich his family’s fortune.

Roger S. Beadle

Chico

More on POTUS

It is time for us to properly address the current U.S. president in a more personal, meaningful way. Using the personal pronoun “he.” Let’s use this as follows: President Therump—thus the pronoun in his name.

Lee Edwards

Cherokee