Letters

Our

Thank you for raising the issue of global warming as it relates to hurricanes [Oct. 3]. The debate seems to focus on whether we have enough evidence that pollution is causing climate change to justify taking steps to reduce greenhouse gases. That standard is too high when the world is facing what might be catastrophic consequences. Even the possibility that human behavior is changing our climate should compel action. American attitudes toward environmental pollution are like our attitudes toward food: we keep shoving pollutants into the atmosphere with the same abandon that we shove junk food into our mouths, even though we know the results will probably be serious. Why are we not proactive when it comes to the planet? Our negligence could have a fatal impact not only on ourselves but also on billions of innocents.
Matthew Hutchison
West Hollywood, California, U.S.

Testifying before a U.S. Senate sub-committee, Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said, "The increased activity since 1995 is due to natural fluctuations and cycles of hurricane activity" and is "not enhanced substantially by global warming." You should have quoted him in a story about whether carbon dioxide emissions and the greenhouse effect are making hurricanes worse.
John Meyer
Golden, Colorado, U.S.

I commend your choice of global warming as a cover story. The effects of worldwide climate change, fueled by human activity, are becoming ever more apparent. Even if it turns out that warmer temperatures do not strengthen tropical storms, we need only look north to find alarming signs of warming trends. Many studies document melting polar ice caps, thinning permafrost and rising sea and air temperatures in the Arctic, which threaten the livelihood of people native to the region. Like so many helpless Gulf Coast residents, these people will suffer because of a profound denial of responsibility. Climate change is a global problem that needs a global solution.
David G. Wright
Sturbridge, Massachusetts, U.S.

There are solutions that can reduce global-warming pollution and preserve a healthy climate for our kids. We must invest in innovative clean-energy sources—from wind turbines and solar panels to biofuels such as ethanol—and use off-the-shelf technologies to make more fuel-efficient cars. Those technologies will stimulate new markets, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, save consumers money, enhance our national security and reduce global-warming pollution. The time to act is now.
Julie Anderson
Climate Change Campaign Manager
Union of Concerned Scientists
Washington

The U.S. has been hit on two fronts—devastating hurricanes and ballooning prices at the gas pump. What appears to be an incurable addiction to automobiles resulted in scenes of cars frozen in gridlock or moving in endless lines at a snail's pace, as residents of Houston fled Hurricane Rita. This could well be what regular rush-hour traffic will look like a decade from now as we continue to build more cars than mass-transit vehicles and more highways than mass-transit infrastructure. The Bush Administration seems to be in denial about global warming, as it continues to ignore the Kyoto agreement in favor of Big Business. But warning signals from nature in the form of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita cannot be ignored.
Max Desouza
Toronto

For decades scientists, environmentalists and meteorologists have been saying that human-generated pollution is producing global warming that is altering the weather. Now it appears it might also be causing more of the worst type of hurricane. Only a few skeptics, industrialists and political opportunists remain unconvinced. But the taxpayers are the ones who have to finance ill-advised and heedless policy decisions, and then pay more to clean up after weather-related disasters.
Clarence Madhosingh
London

Rita: The Second Storm
Hurricanes Rita and Katrina will change how the Federal Government handles disasters [Oct. 3]. Let's hope the Bush Administration does not use this crisis the way it used 9/11—as an excuse to consolidate even more power in the hands of the right-wing corporate é lite. We must reverse the trend of allowing corporations to set our national policy.
Allen L. Wenger
Mountain Home, Idaho, U.S.

George W. Bush's handlers left no photo op unexplored as they sought to convince us that the President was fully engaged in hurricane relief after Rita. Of course, that strategy only underscores that this President is clueless. Bush moved quickly when two things of great importance to him were threatened: the Texas oil infrastructure and his poll ratings.
Brandon Bittner
Royersford, Pennsylvania, U.S.

Building a major city on a low-lying swamp in a hurricane corridor is about as intelligent as building a house of cards on a bowling lane. The only way to absolutely protect New Orleans from a Katrina-like situation ever happening again is never to rebuild. It is wrong to blame the Bush Administration for decades of inaction by many, many administrations. Low taxes are not to blame, and less government is not to blame. A society that promotes dependence on government to always get it out of difficulties has only itself to blame. The problems caused in the wake of the hurricanes could have been avoided if people had taken responsibility for themselves.
Murray Hills
Auckland, New Zealand

Animation Forever
Your article on the switch from hand-drawn to computer-generated [CG] animation at Disney [Oct. 3] mentioned me and my colleague Andreas Deja as "respected animators ... [who] resisted making the switch to CG." I won't speak for Andreas, but in my case, that statement just isn't true. First, I'm not a Disney employee, even though I continue to work for the company on numerous projects. They include a test with Roger Rabbit animated in CG to prove we could do a squashy-stretchy character, a stereoscopic CG version of Aladdin's genie and, most recently, CG animation for Disneyland's 50th-anniversary TV spots. Is my first love hand-drawn animation? Absolutely. Am I going to continue animating and directing in hand-drawn whenever possible? You bet. But resisting the switch to CG? Puh-leeze.
Eric Goldberg
Glendale, California, U.S.

Labor Pains
"Will Europe Ever Work?", on Europeans' shifting attitudes about labor and unemployment [Oct. 3], suggested that workers can expect to work harder and longer for no additional pay. But what would employees get without extra money? Food at the supermarket? Gas at the pumps? Part of their mortgage? When corporations are in trouble, top management should be held responsible, including highly paid executives. A salary cut would surely not hurt them. It is true that Europeans have the benefit of a social-welfare system, and it is abused by some lazy people. But for generations, workers have been fighting for better lives. We want fathers and mothers to be home at night to have a meal with the family; we want parents to spend time with their children on a long holiday. Nobody is in favor of a 50-hour workweek, only 12 days of vacation a year or American-style soup kitchens for those who cannot cope.
Hans-Günther Tappe
Steinheim, Germany

You noted that European attitudes toward work will have to change in the new global economy. I am European, and I think our attitudes toward work may already have changed. And I doubt that even if all job openings are filled, the unemployment rate will be significantly reduced. From my observations, the job market is shrinking and cannot offer enough positions for workers.
Jean-Pierre Huille
Brunoy, France

Thugs by Any Other Name
Your notebook item "The New Bin Laden?" [Sept. 5] said that according to recent European intelligence reports, al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, "now rivals Osama bin Laden in influence among Middle Eastern and European jihadists." Such stories exaggerate the importance of al-Qaeda and al-Zarqawi. He is nothing but a low-level hit man. And now the media have enhanced his grandeur, providing more motivation to the harebrained Islamist yokels terrorizing the world! These people thrive on sensational news stories. Will the media please stop glorifying the horrendous activities of these burned-out thugs and stop labeling them "jihadists"?
Brigadier Mateen M. Mohajir (Ret.)
Karachi

Iran's New Man
Re your interview with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [Sept. 26]: In discussing the hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran more than 25 years ago, he said, "Sometimes, in order to gain your rights, you have to do certain things." That sounds as if he condones any type of behavior. But in answer to a question about al-Zarqawi's call for violence against Shi'ites in Iraq, he said, "Any decision that leads to the killing of innocents is something that we reject." Comparing his answer rejecting the use of violence to the one about the necessity of doing "certain things" makes me wonder what Ahmadinejad truly believes.
Steve Brown
Johannesburg

The Refinery Crunch
Matthew Yeomans' essay "Refining the Problem" [Sept. 26] argued that building more refineries may alleviate the oil shortage. But we also need to tackle problems on the demand side. Developing countries such as India and China demand vast quantities of oil, but they don't have a lot of energy-saving technology and aren't taking concrete steps to promote energy conservation. Our sources of crude oil are not everlasting. Governments must do their best to educate their people about the need to save energy. Citizens must play a part in energy conservation in their daily lives, or oil prices will not come down.
Kenny Tan
Singapore

Genocide Avenger
Known as the Nazi hunter who pursued war criminals for more than 50 years, Simon Wiesenthal [MILESTONES, Oct. 3] helped with the arrest of 1,000 people charged with killing Jews. Wiesenthal, who was himself imprisoned in several concentration camps, became the conscience of the Holocaust, making certain that the atrocities of World War II were not forgotten. On March 31, 1967, TIME wrote about Wiesenthal's memoir The Murderers Among Us. Here is an excerpt from the review that touches on the fate of the young Jewish diarist Anne Frank:

"Wiesenthal ... is more concerned that the world—particularly the postwar generation of Jews and Germans who find Hitler's genocide hard to believe—realize that there were, and still are, SS killers at large. He believes that young Germans, wary of the sentimentality in the Anne Frank story, were unconvinced that the entire tragedy really happened until HE LOCATED KARL SILBERBAUER, THE SS SERGEANT WHO ARRESTED ANNE FRANK, AND IDENTIFIED HIM AS AN INSPECTOR IN THE VIENNESE POLICE DEPARTMENT. Silberbauer readily admitted his role. Asked if he had read the diary, he told a reporter: 'Bought the little book last week to see if I'm in it. But I'm not.' Silberbauer was reprimanded, and is now back on the Vienna force."