Natural gas view a ‘dangerous’ argument to advance
Last week’s opinion piece (“Drop assault on natural gas,” Sequim Gazette, Feb. 9, page A-12) was very well written. Unfortunately, it attempts to advance an argument that is not only incorrect, but also dangerous.
Natural gas is not clean, safe and efficient. In fact, combustion of this limited fossil fuel resource is responsible for fully one-third of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. That figure doesn’t even account for the leaks of methane that accompany its production.
Methane is an exceedingly more potent driver of climate change, much more powerful than carbon dioxide over the long-term. Does anyone truly believe that the oil and gas industry will adequately invest in carbon capture and storage to adequately address these externalized costs?
Expansion of dependence on yet another fossil fuel is sure to lock us into the death spiral from which our children and grandchildren shall likely never be able to extricate themselves.
We cannot gamble the future of the fragile ecosystems upon which all of life as we know it depend. Have recent heat domes, super storms, melting polar ice caps, global sea rise, warming and acidification, species extinction and other horrors not yet captured our attention? It is well past time to respond to the threats we have created.
I applaud Governor Inslee and Democratic legislators who are attempting to turn this ship around, even at this late date. Banning natural gas in all new construction is a crucial next step to mitigating the horrors that abound if we continue to rank anyone’s financial benefit over environmental realities.
Susan Melka
Sequim
Perspective on Cooper’s COVID column
My takeaways from Bertha Cooper’s recent column in the paper (“Why me? Why not?,” Sequim Gazette, Feb. 9, page A-12) may be different than yours. First, her vaccinated and boosted status did nothing to prevent her from catching COVID. Even with her history in medicine and her hyper-vigilance, she was completely susceptible to the bug.
Second, her mask did nothing to protect her. She says she wore it whenever she went out. It did nothing.
Third, maybe she caught it from someone not wearing a mask correctly. Maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. According to my second point, the mask didn’t do anything to protect her, but it could possibly prevent spread from someone sick.
Of course, you would have to have COVID to spread COVID. If you don’t have it, wearing a mask does nothing. It protects nobody. Not you nor others.
Fourth, she still stayed home with a disease she says could be disastrous to her husband, and is so contagious she caught it from someone who never touched her, maybe.
Bertha, everything you believed you knew about COVID may have been wrong. Maybe the vaccine doesn’t protect. Maybe masks don’t work. You talk about the young people and their disregard for others, but you stayed home with COVID and with your husband.
I think I had COVID a couple weeks ago. I had muscle soreness for a couple hours. A hot bath and I was done with it. Maybe my vitamins work better than your vaccine. Maybe, maybe not, but I bet my life on it.
You bet your life that our government told us the truth. I hope you and your husband and all the friends that came to your aid are OK.
Mark White
Port Angeles
Woke
About 1760 in West Africa, an 8-year-old girl was abducted, shipped to colonial America, and purchased. Named Phillis after the ship and Wheatley, the surname of her owners, she became the first African American classical poet to decry enslavement.
Throughout U.S. history, Black Americans voiced insistence and defiance against prejudice and brutality.
Early on, resistance produced phrases and folk songs like “Blue-Tail Fly,” which celebrated slavery’s death. Basic survival watchwords of precaution and alertness to potential danger of white people, originated in harrowing situations.
Ida Wells, in 1892, started Tennessee’s anti-lynching campaign. She encapsulated that time as “mob-rule, rape with impunity, and Supreme Court sanctioned segregation.”
In 1923, Black Nationalist, Marcus Garvey, coined the phrase “Black is Beautiful,” stressing the imperative for Black consciousness — “waking up” for equality and dignity.
Lead Belly’s 1931 song “Scottsboro Boys” chronicled the case of nine teenage boys accused of raping a white woman. He sang to forewarn Black Americans of perils living and traveling in Scottsboro, Ala.
William Kelley’s 1962 article “If You’re Woke, You Dig It” pinpointed the appropriation of Black cultural words, thus the loss of original meanings.
2014 saw “woke” revived by Black Lives Matter activists, with a specific warning to keep watch for police vicious tactics and unjust treatment.
When people use “woke” in a mocking, derisive manner, are they “sailing under false colors”? We sail under one U.S. flag, concluded free, with equal rights. To be “woke” is to comprehend our history.
Gayle Brauner
Port Angeles
Political party to blame for ‘current abyss’
Inflation is at a 40-year high, COVID is rampant; illegal border entries are at record levels with attendant narcotics-, sex- and human-trafficking. The Department of Homeland Security is bussing and flying these illegals to other states in the middle of the night, with zero vetting for COVID or criminal background (“‘Betraying the American people’: Leaked video reveals Joe Biden’s ‘hush hush’ migrant invasion,” New York Post, Jan. 26).
Violent crime is spiking in major cities, and courts are rejecting some federal and state vaccination mandates (“12 major cities hit all-time homicide records,” ABC News, Dec. 8, 2021).
Per NBC News (Jan. 23), 72 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. A Real Clear Politics average of all recent polls shows a 39 percent approval and 54 percent disapproval for Biden. His agenda for “transformational change” is stalled – by his own party. His cognitive state is a subject for another day.
The “summer riots” in multiple U.S. cities caused billions of dollars in destruction from rioting, arson, looting; and resulted in deaths and hundreds of injured police officers. This destruction was repeatedly downplayed by liberals and news media as “mostly peaceful.”
Americans have not forgotten. Violent crime has spiked in all of these Democrat-controlled cities (Seattle, Portland, Detroit, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, New York, etc). Haven’t heard “Defund the Police” for a while.
Common sense and polling data from multiple sources indicate democrats will likely lose control of both houses of congress in nine months. State and local elections often follow national trends.
The party of race and identity has worked hard to get to its current abyss.
Richard Lohrman
Sequim
