Opinion editor’s observe: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers on-line and in print every day. To contribute, click on right here.
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Bill Spikowski deserves a solution. He’s the former metropolis planner who requested, in Sunday’s Star Tribune article “Not giving up on a dream,” “Why would you say we shouldn’t enjoy it for 30 or 50 years?” He was responding to the concept that we must always rebuild on the low-lying coastal areas which have and can proceed to expertise main hurricane injury and flooding as the local weather warms.
So listed below are just a few solutions: 1) Building in these areas of sure flooding prices quite a lot of public cash for roads, water, sewer and utility traces, colleges, hospitals, fireplace and police stations. In addition, we now have to arrange for and perform main rescue and restore operations, at the threat to human life. At the very least, residents ought to cowl all of these prices, since the public investments might be made the place they will not be worn out in our lifetimes. 2) Large-scale mitigation methods to guard towards erosion and seawater penetration and to protect the ecosystem can’t be designed and carried out when the properties are carved up and privately owned. We would depart for our grandchildren a severely degraded atmosphere that would have been averted. 3) In 30-50 years, there might be a inhabitants of coastal householders who insist that we take excessive measures — maybe monumental sea partitions which are unlikely to work in any case — to guard the lives they’ve now come to cherish.
So, Mr. Spikowski, it is time to transfer on.
Lawrence Rudnick, Minneapolis
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Looking in the rearview mirror, it was encouraging to see the bipartisan efforts of President Joe Biden and Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis once they directed funding to areas in Florida devastated by Hurricane Ian. But what’s hypocritical right here is that this. The huge mantra of the political proper is that the feds ought to transfer out of the approach, and the states ought to have major duty for occasions of their state. And but, the Republican governor of the state of Florida, that now has an enormous price range surplus of greater than $21 billion, requested billions of {dollars} of storm reduction, once more, from the feds.
So ought to federal taxpayers proceed to be the predominant gamers in bailing Florida out, particularly when the devastation from hurricanes is barely going to get considerably worse in the future? And out-of-staters, together with many snowbirds, have been transferring there in droves.
There are definitely many cases in states the place vital outdoors assist can simply be justified. But is that this the case in Florida? Perhaps not.
J.R. Clark, Minneapolis
DEVELOPMENT
The letter “Cost-benefit is clear: Build” (Readers Write, Oct. 14) unexpectedly dismissing issues about growth displacing eagles tragically and blindly displays the human-centric imaginative and prescient of life that’s bringing us the sixth extinction and repeats the catastrophic false alternative between financial development and environmental safety that introduced us local weather change. The author fails to acknowledge the interconnectedness of all life-forms that goes far past shedding a single eagle’s nest. As bushes and wildlife habitat are misplaced to unchecked growth in the identify of density all through the area (together with the lack of an eagle’s nest right here and there and all over the place), we fragment and threaten the internet of life on which our personal lives rely.
The letter additionally paints a simplistic and false trade-off between city density and concrete sprawl; one want solely drive (or bike) out of Minneapolis to see the relentless lack of inexperienced area in suburbs that additional diminishes our surroundings and our personal well being. While a simple and superficial rationalization for driving wildlife out of city areas, destroying habitat in cities just isn’t stopping city sprawl. In reality, people should restrict our development and mitigate the environmental injury we wreak on our planet moderately than proceed to take advantage of and extinguish different types of life who even have a spot in conserving our ecosystems intact. Yes, it is most positively “time to rethink this narrow conception of environmentalism” that places people in the heart of life and justifies the destruction of different species. It’s time to guard different species who’ve simply as a lot want and proper to reside in our cities.
Constance Pepin, Minneapolis
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In response to the letter “Cost-benefit is clear: Build”: The author is OK with tearing down bushes in order that we are able to defend the atmosphere.
Before tearing down bushes and tearing up golf programs, we must always renovate dilapidated housing all through the Twin Cities first. Offer tax incentives and subsidies.
To assume somebody seeking to reside in St. Paul will transfer miles away if this mission is not constructed is unnecessary.
The housing market is softening. I’m assured you could find housing in St. Paul with out tearing down these bushes.
Jim Piga, Mendota Heights
DROUGHT
Sunday’s article on the demise of our oldest bushes on account of drought grabbed my consideration (“Oldest trees in peril after dry summers”). The Star Tribune ought to print extra articles like this to tell and educate its readers of the slow-moving pure catastrophe that this drought represents.
I’m involved that our treasured city forest might be harmed past restore if human beings do not assist. The indicators of drought-stress are apparent: smaller leaves, lack of leaves at the high, black and useless branches punctuating the cover. Some bushes are totally useless. More will fail to leaf out in the spring and die. Just to be clear, I’m not speaking about ash bushes which are dying on account of emerald ash borer. All different bushes are falling sufferer to the drought.
Trees make life higher in so some ways, from enhancing property values to supporting good psychological well being. The motion to extend tree cover in tree-starved neighborhoods reveals that there’s a rising consciousness that the presence of bushes enhances high quality of life.
It’s not too late. Water is what the bushes want and people can provide it. The state of affairs is pressing.
Again, I urge the Star Tribune to proceed to meet its responsibility to tell its readers about the progress of this historic drought, its impact on our inexperienced world and the way readers can mitigate the drawback.
Eleni Skevas, Roseville
NEWS BUSINESS
Over the previous few weeks the Star Tribune has printed commentary and a number of letters on why newspapers are in robust monetary and aggressive form. All have displayed a profound ignorance of the topic.
The problem for newspapers has nothing to do with their so-called monopoly on news. The problem, since the rise of the web, is that in pre-internet days, newspapers made their cash from promoting, and particularly labeled promoting, over which they did have a neighborhood de facto monopoly.
For one purpose or one other, newspaper administration didn’t envision the rise of internet-based providers like Craigslist for purchasing and promoting “stuff,” Monster and its successors for recruiting, and Zillow and Realtor.com (amongst others) for actual property adverts, and took no steps to change their business fashions to take care of the menace.
That’s why they’re failing. It has nothing to do with shedding their monopoly on news dissemination as, from a business perspective, the function news performed in the business was to draw readers, to not generate income. Advertisers have been shopping for publicity to these readers. That’s how the business labored.
It’s particularly unhappy that these misinformed commentaries ran in a newspaper whose administration should completely perceive this level from firsthand expertise.
Bob Lewis, Minneapolis
The author is a former technologist at the Star Tribune.