Make Earth Day an opportunity to start caring
Over the past year we have had a steady diet of headlines that grab our current attention: election issues, COVID-19, injustice, and political bickering. Where is our future focus on planetary health, climate change, global cooperation, and conservation?
Earth Day on April 22 is an opportunity to step back and reassess the misguided direction that will increasingly affect our lives and those of our children. As we are caught up in daily living and charged up by political distortions, who is looking out for our environment in the long-term?
Scientists provide warnings to our business-as-usual, materialistic society. Do you really care? We need some of the youthful passions of the late 1960′s when our youth sought answers to moral questions. Should we treat our oceans as a garbage dump and deplete it of marine life with no consequences to those that ravage our seas? Greenhouse gases are destined adversely affect every aspect of our planet. Earth Day is an opportunity to begin (then continue) caring.
JOHN SHACKLETON, ATLANTA
Easy access to voting, vaccination good for society
I find it very interesting that conservatives find voter ID requirements to be a perfectly reasonable requirement to protect the integrity of the election process but are aghast at the idea of having to prove that they’ve been vaccinated.
They are very comfortable with the argument about needing IDs to buy tickets and get on airplanes, etc., but seem to forget that we also ask for proof of vaccination to attend school, travel, or be in the military. Must everything politicized? Easy access to voting and broad vaccination efforts seem like good things for our society.
MIKE PERLMUTTER, TUCKER
It’s not the president’s job to ‘reshape’ the gov’t
In less than 3 months in office, the president has supported legislation that commits nearly 6 trillion dollars to accomplish what news reports say is his vision to ‘reshape the relationship between the government and the people.’
There are two flaws with this approach. First, according to our Constitution, there is no distinction between ‘the government and the people’, which is obvious in the first three words of its preamble. Second, in Article II, describing the role of the president, there is nothing I can find about the power to “reshape the relationship” of government. Instead, the president is required to swear or affirm by oath that he will “… to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” This doesn’t appear to be a mandate to ‘fundamentally transform” or “reshape” the government. He had over 40 years as a Senator to legislate the changes he now seeks to impose by other means. Why didn’t he act earlier?
GARY O’NEILL, MARIETTA
It’s great to see bipartisanship in government
It was spirit-lifting to read that our Republican governor is working hand in hand with our Democratic representatives and president to secure business in Georgia. That’s the way the country is supposed to work.
Having two parties is good for argument concerning pros and cons of proposed action, but simply being focused on destroying the other party is mean spirited and just flat stupid. I love it when politicians begin to show signs of intelligence.
MARGARET CURTIS, ATLANTA
