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Thursday, May. 01, 2008

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The View on Global Warming
Three of the soldiers on your recent cover were killed in the battle for Iwo Jima, their deaths as poignant and selfless today as they were in 1945 [April 28]. Your alteration of this photograph devalues their sacrifice and that of many others. In this time of war, when so many families are receiving a neatly folded flag in honor of their fallen loved ones, your cover is truly offensive. Have we as a nation become so ungrateful?
Richard Putney,
Richmond, Va.

It is encouraging that TIME is taking on the global climate crisis, but I am concerned that Bryan Walsh's solutions strangely resemble the war in Iraq: top-down policies and reliance on technology with little or no sacrifice required of U.S. citizens. If America is to lead this battle, much less win it, individuals and families will need to make radical changes in their lives, including conserving energy and water, reducing consumption, eating differently and traveling less. It is possible these changes could be made voluntarily, but an intensive national effort, like the one made during World War II, is probably required. For that we will need great moral and political leadership from above and great courage and commitment on the grass-roots level. I hope your magazine will continue to catalyze both.
Mary Earle Chase,
Novato, Calif.

I was disappointed that you covered all the fringe power sources like wind, solar and wave action, which can meet only a small percentage of our needs. Making fuel from foodstuffs seems evil, considering the world's hunger crisis. The TIME has arrived to reconsider nuclear power. Please give us an unbiased study on the efforts of those nations that are producing electricity from nuclear energy. How safe are the plants? What are they doing with the waste? What is the carbon footprint?
Lyman Burgmeier,
Cypress, Calif.

Any discussion of greening the earth or our country is lacking if it does not include curbing population growth through avenues such as health-care services and, in the U.S., limits on immigration. If we reduce each person's carbon footprint by half and then double the population in 50 years, we are right back where we started.
Larry Sarner,
Maui, Hawaii

Your article missed one important point. Walsh notes that we should mandate green building. We should, and it will pay off a lot over time. But we should also aggressively promote the retrofitting of existing buildings. Owners of homes and other buildings can save energy right now with existing technology, and in most cases, the cost is negative: they save more than they spend.
Doug Burke,
Oak Park, Ill.

By going beyond providing merely a check and counterbalance to the other powers-that-be through information and criticism, to assuming a leadership role in addressing the world's most critical problems, Time has taken the Fourth Estate to its fullest potential: proactive journalism aimed particularly at global problems for which the clock is ticking and passive commentary is insufficient.
Chris Tong,
Kelseyville, Calif.

Forgotten Allies
No one would wish to devalue the sacrifice of Canada's soldiers in Afghanistan, but Samantha Power's statement [April 28] that "Canada occupies the fighting tier, alongside the U.S. Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands" is disappointingly incomplete. It might interest Power to learn that Australia has almost a thousand troops on the ground in Afghanistan, 350 dedicated to the reconstruction effort, but at least 400 more on operational duties, which puts them very much in the fighting tier.
Anthony Connell,
Sydney

Power forgets Australia. One of our precious boys died in action there last week. Considering we should never have been there in the first place, perhaps Canada, along with Australia, should move out, and soon.
Peter Jones,
Albion, Victoria

The Pope and the President
Nancy Gibbs compares the Pope to President George W. Bush and declares that "they share a taste for straight talk and simple truths" [April 28]. Bush may use straight talk, even if it's misguided, but "simple truths"? His Administration can hardly be credited with any such thing. She then quotes the Pope in relation to the pedophilia scandal, which he stated was "sometimes badly handled." Sometimes? And these men somehow espouse straight talk? Surely Gibbs jests.
Peter Edelson,
New York City

The Political Elite
Regarding "A Bitter Lesson" [April 28]: The pundits were frustrated when they couldn't label Barack Obama a racist, so they came up with élitist as an otherwise suitable condemnatory epithet. For heaven's sake, the man is running for President of the U.S., not chairmanship of the bowling league. An élitist is surely someone who has a wider field of taste, interests, education and comprehension than the average person. Isn't that what the country desperately needs after eight years of the cowboy populist?
John W. Gray,
Toronto

Karen Tumulty's caricature of Obama's bitter-voters observation as a "dismissal of small-town voters as narrow-minded, churchgoing gun nuts" who are "irrational and bigoted" represents political spin rather than a fair reading of his words. He was explaining why some voters focus on social issues rather than on their economic interests. Tumulty's article does little to help us understand Obama's "mangled" meaning and instead carelessly perpetuates his opponents' spin.
Brian C. Jones,
Waverly, Iowa

Tumulty has joined the rest of the Washington press crowd in condemning Obama for comments that the rest of America, outside the Beltway, knows to be essentially truthful. Why else would Obama's poll numbers have remained strong despite the fury and umbrage of those in Washington most sheltered from what the rest of the country is going through? Maybe lapel flag pins are the only story they've come to understand.
Jay H. Abrams,
Boca Raton, Fla.

In her story on Obama's "Bitter" comments, Tumulty refers to "downscale voters." Webster's defines downscale as "located or moving toward ... the middle or lower end of a social or economic scale." It would be interesting to know, in Tumulty's neo-élitist judgment, what constitutes a downscale voter.
Frank Brodersen,
Fredericksburg, Va.