Re: Ronnie Cummins, Organic Consumers Association
Dear Editor:
After reading through your website, I’ve decided to give up my favorite ice cream, Starbucks Coffee Almond Fudge. I cannot, in good conscience, eat it and continue to nurse my baby, knowing that the list of ingredients is withholding information from me — doesn’t let me know that the ice cream contains genetically modified foods and hormones known to cause cancer.
Thank goodness for Ben and Jerry’s. At least they’ve pledged to voluntarily label their products, donate portions of their profits to improving the world at-large, and make their ice cream taste delicious in the process.
Skyler Wind
Brattleboro, Vt.
Re: Detroit Sucks
Dear Editor:
What I find most amazing is the blind eye most policymakers turn toward recent transportation successes and failures. For example, decision-makers are willing to pay any amount to have Boston’s Big Dig project finished, even though it doesn’t address the city’s air-pollution problems. When completed, the project will be the most expensive road on earth. Alternately, the Alewife Transit Station Parking Garage, part of Greater Boston’s public transit system, was built on time, within budget, and keeps thousands of cars out of downtown on a daily basis. No one seems to remember this.
Could it be because the media focuses only on bad news?
Jonathan C. Allen
Brookline, Mass.
Dear Editor:
I don’t mean to single out California, but if all, or even 25 percent, of the houses in Silicon Valley and other sunny climes had photovoltaics and/or solar-water heaters, wouldn’t the energy problem be solved? How about a financial incentive to install renewable energy generation on the roofs of all those ranch-style houses?
Charlotte Hitchcock
New Haven, Conn.
Re: Eric Britton, Earth Car Free Day
Dear Editor:
I was happily surprised to read about the “car-free day” concept. A week or so ago, as I was walking to work in downtown Manhattan, I imagined, for a moment, what this city would be like without the noise and pollution of the rushing traffic. I thought about how peaceful it would be. Then I thought, what if there could be just one day when people didn’t use theirs cars? How excited I am to read that it has been done — I can’t wait to find out more.
I hope that this splendid idea takes hold in my part of the world.
Janice Iannelli Di Tosto
Lincoln Park, N.J.
Re: 10 Reasons to Drill … Today
Dear Editor:
This article is so appropriate, considering the downward spiral of mindless tripe that is spewing forth from our nation’s capital under the dismal command of Baby Bush. But I fear that the article could appear in a different guise, changed with a few (very few) minor alterations, and people might then print it out and post it in the company lunchroom, not realizing it is satire. I work with people like that.
Amy Brzeczek
Tujunga, Calif.
Re: 10 Reasons to Drill … Today
Dear Editor:
I just wanted to let you know I appreciate Grist, but the article, “10 Reasons to Drill…Today,” was not funny. Maybe the writer was trying to open our eyes to problems, but the cynicism and sarcasm is too sharp.
Ron Guitard
Southern U.S.
Re: Electric Boogie
Dear Editor:
I suspect we would all act differently in our lives if we had the facts. Your presentation of concrete examples of the price and effects of our perceived right to electricity is laudable. It raises the very real questions of who serves whom and at what price.
Rana Belshe
Fairchild, Wis.
Re: Mining, Ranching, and Drilling
Dear Editor:
A great “do good” would be to demand that all so-called environmentalists who are protesting mining, drilling, and other energy development and who own a vehicle that gets less than 50 miles per gallon turn in their polluting, energy-consuming vehicle.
It is the height of hypocrisy to see an environmentalist in a fuel-inefficient SUV with a roof rack and titanium skis protesting domestic mining and energy development. I was shot at in Desert Storm so environmentalists could drive their SUVs and BMWs around collecting signatures to protest domestic energy development and mining. I guess it is okay to trash someone else’s country for these resources.
Your website is the height of hypocrisy, because you are using a medium that required someone to mine and manufacture to deliver your phony messages.
Tyler Daniel
Dear Editor:
What could be worse than going into the 21st century with President Bush as leader of the world’s most powerful nation? Bully that he is, Bush will persevere and justify his causes with promises of economic rebound. I still don’t understand how such an ignorant person could become president.
I wonder if his values are representative of the American people.
Anneliese Anthony Marques
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Dear Editor:
Monsanto’s case against Percy Schmeiser’s case makes me want to vomit. I, for one, am pissed, and I want to do something about it.
The agribusiness giants want to mess with nature to such a degree that they are actually making it a crime for pollen to float onto non-genetically modified crops. Does anybody out there have an address for Percy Schmeiser? I want to send him $100 to fight Monsanto. Moreover, I challenge any Grist readers with the financial wherewithal to do the same. If Monsanto wants to modify nature into some homogenous monster, fine. But let’s fight it all the way.
Everett Volk
Washington, D.C.
Dear Editor:
I’m used to thinking of Grist as the first name in environmental news on the Internet. After the April Fools’ edition of the Daily Grist, you’re also the first name in April Fools’ cleverness. Absolutely wonderful — the funniest jokes of the day, and also the ones with the most bite.
James Grimmelmann
Seattle, Wash.
Dear Editor:
A-plus, folks! This was fantastic. How creative and fun. Thanks.
Donna Clayton Lawder
Kingston, N.J.
Dear Editor:
Your April Fools’ Day edition was the funniest thing I ha
ve ever read. I was disappointed to hear that there isn’t really going to be a recycled eco-Barbie, though.
Laura Denoncourt
Bonita Springs, Fla.
Re: When Is a Caribou an Albatross?
Dear Editor:
I have been reading about the anti-environment stance taken by President Bush. I am appalled by his short-sighted zeal to plunder oil fields in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (doesn’t refuge mean anything to him?), his backing out of the Kyoto agreement (and his campaign promise) to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants, and his whoring of himself to the mining industry by not lowering the allowable level of arsenic in drinking water.
Is there anything we citizens can do? Why isn’t the public outcry deafening? Do people think that their health, their children’s health, and the reputation of this nation are unimportant?
Jami Shimizu
Issaquah, Wash.
