Letters from Our Readers: Summer 2008

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Back Off!

I could not agree more with geolo­gist Orrin Pilkey, whom you inter­viewed in the Spring 2008 issue ("Life on the Edge"). Nobody is forced to live right on the shoreline. Sometimes nature is too powerful for man to overcome, and we must learn to adapt rather than seek to change it. Seacoast developments bring high economic as well as environmental costs. Private insur­ers are becoming more reluctant to grant policies for shorefront prop­erty, for good reason. Politicians, on the other hand, get elected by promising everything to everybody. As long as the government insures such development, it will continue. This is one area where environ­mentalists and economic libertar­ians would likely agree.

Steven Kalka
East Rockaway, New York

Truckers' Plight

In the Dispatches section of your Spring 2008 issue you ran a short piece called "The Trucker's Lament." I am a truck driver and proud supporter of NRDC, but I feel you are placing emphasis on solu­tions that will not help our situation. The trucking companies do not own the trucking contractors' equip­ment, so the only way for them to expand the use of pollution-reduc­ing equipment would be to force the contractors to forgo their indepen­dent status and become employees. They would then be subject to the will of the companies. If the govern­ment offered tax breaks to truck drivers who own their own equip­ment, there would be an incentive to upgrade. For example, I have put an auxiliary power unit on my truck to reduce idle time, but I receive no tax breaks other than the interest write-off of the loan to finance it. The California Air Resources Board is going about this the wrong way, and I believe it will eventually cost many people their jobs.

­­Jason Bialous
Providence Forge, Virginia

Errata

In "Requiem for a River," Tucson should not have been included among the cities listed on page 26 that might be small towns were it not for water drawn from the Colorado River. Tucson did not begin receiving water from the Colorado until 1993. In the photo caption on page 27, Jill Baron should not be described as a "river­keeper" because the term has been trademarked by the Riverkeeper organization. On page 38 of "The Giving Trees," the description of plant respiration inaccurately states that plants give off CO2 only when drought or darkness brings photosynthesis to a halt. Like most organisms, plants respire (and "exhale" CO2) all the time, day and night, and in all seasons. The following artists were improperly credited in the Spring 2008 issue: page 18, Ellen Weinstein; page 19, Misty Keasler; pages 6 and 62, Matt Greenslade.