Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/580837
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS WhileIwasdrivingdown Walnut Street the other day I noticed two things that dis- turbed me. First a cleanly dressed young girl stopped in her walk west, carefully took a long last sip out of her milk- shake, and then equally as care- fully placed the empty cup against the wall of the build- ing next to her, I suppose so it would not trip someone. There were available garbage containers in clear sight. Second, a young man, cig- arette hanging out of his mouth, with a poorly devel- oped beard, ball cap askew, and some kind or beverage can in his hand came speed- ing across the intersection of South Jackson on his bicycle, oblivious of the stop signal; he tossed his can to the curb as he turned west onto Wal- nut, not even looking back. Most parents have had to tell their children to clean up their room from time to time. Children need to know rules and expectations and learn about standards of behav- ior. When I read the comic strip Zits there is often a ma- jor disagreement between Jeremy and his mother over the condition of his room, the need to do laundry, and san- itation in general. It looks like his mother has given up, as she leaves the room, head down and shoulders bent. It is almost too late to train somebody by the time they reach Jeremy's age. He has grown into a collection of bad habits. There has been a lot of news recently about cleaning up. Even the Pope is chastis- ing us, telling us we have to clean up after ourselves. Pot grows have been shut down, not only because they are ille- gal but they contaminate the water supply in many cases. We are enforcing necessary rules and regulations to pro- tect all of us. In Redding and elsewhere illegal campsites have been disbanded (at least temporar- ily), with enormous amounts of detritus, waste products, garbage, drug parapherna- lia, stolen grocery carts, and other things almost unimag- inable, collected up to be dis- posed of properly. Clearly those who feel forced to live in these camps do not see cleaning up after themselves on the top of their list of ac- tivities. There has been increased emphasis on building code enforcement in Redding's low rent district, and one mer- chant has been taking it upon himself to publicly pick up trash on the block of his es- tablishment. My brain works in funny ways, and the examples re- minded me of the rant we hear from time to time in the local paper and across select media about the great lib- eral myth of climate change, global warming and our en- vironmental responsibil- ities. There are also com- plaints that the Pope, who is a trained chemist, should leave science to the scien- tists, whatever that means. Fox News commentator An- drew Napolitano even stated that "if he aids the political agenda of the atheistic left, he is a false prophet." I am not sure if it is only atheists who worry about the environ- ment. Whether or not climate change is an apt description or global warming is more accurate, the fact remains we have not picked up our own global room, and that fact is causing us problems, both presently and in the fu- ture. There are plenty of data to indicate our inability to deal with the unintended conse- quence of our actions and to fend off the political pres- sure to back off by self- inter- ested parties. Most recently the corruption of the Louisi- ana political system has been blamed, in part, for the prob- lems with flooding because of the influence of the energy companies, for example. Ef- forts in California to reduce our carbon foot print were re- cently beaten back by oil lob- byists. There are a lot of us. It is estimated that there were about 5 million of us at the dawn of agriculture, about 10,000 years ago. There has not been a steady growth; it was not until the 19th cen- tury that there were one bil- lion of us. There are now over 7 billion of us; the population grew by over 4.5 billion in the twentieth century alone! In other words the world popu- lation grew at an average an- nual rate of 45,000,000 peo- ple during the 20th century. To put this growth into some perspective I decided to do a little math. Using an average of 2000 calories per day everyone would mean that in order to sustain the population growth of 4.5 bil- lion during the 20th century we would have had to pro- duce far more calories for those people than in 1900: 3,285,000,000,000,000 calo- ries! My sources tell me that an acre of wheat can pro- duce 6,400,000 calories of food. The number above is the equivalent of 513,281,250 acres, or over eight hundred thousand square miles, over five times the area of the state of California. Now consider the irriga- tion, fertilization, processing, transportation, and other re- quirements to produce and distribute that amount of wheat. Of course those 4.5 billion more of us also require shel- ter, clothing, and other ame- nities. We also produce enor- mous amounts of various waste products or garbage. It is estimated the per capita waste worldwide is 1.4 kg per day; the figures are higher for more developed countries. Using the average, this would mean that the new 4.5 bil- lion of us are producing over 9 million tons of waste daily above what was produced a century ago. Even in Red Bluff we deal with waste is- sues. It is hard to deny that our growth has not contributed to the condition of our en- vironment, including our weather. We haven't' stopped growing. There are more and more of us every day. The es- timated world population in 2000 was 6.09 billion; it is es- timated today there are now about 7.3 billion of us! To quote the Pontiff, "Any harm done to the environ- ment, therefore, is harm done to humanity…. Right now we do not have a very good rela- tionship with the creation." JoeHarropisaretired educator with more than 30 years of service to the North State. He can be reached at DrJoeHarrop@sbcglobal.net. Joe Harrop Even the Pope says 'Pick up your room' Cartoonist's take Speakingup for letter writers Editor: I will begin by stating I am college educated and some- what intelligent. I am bright enough to craft a letter to the editor that meets the stan- dards and sophistication re- quired by Friday columnist Robert Minch. I am writing on behalf of all citizens whose thoughts and ideas deserve to be read and heard. I am writing on behalf of those who maybe aren't as smart or wise as Mr. Minch, but have the guts to put their names on letters that may not be properly edited. Friends of Red Bluff, do not be afraid to write. Your so- called "nonsense" is welcomed and necessary in a democratic society. As for Mr. Minch, I occa- sionally read his column and there are times when the one only writing nonsense is him. Oh, by the way, I know what I'll be doing between din- ner and bedtime for at least another week: watching the Dodgers in the playoffs. — Pat Gleason, Red Bluff Patriots celebrate six years Editor: The Tehama County Patriots had a pizza party on Sept. 29, celebrating our 6th year anni- versary. We are helping people to un- der stand our Constitution and government. It has been a fun time and lots of work getting the State of Jefferson voted in. We have entered Red Bluff and Los Molinos parades. We are now picking up trash on I-5 south of Red Bluff every three months. We invite all young people and old to come and join us on Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the West- side Grange on West Walnut Street. We want to thank the Board of Supervisors, Sheriff, Proba- tion and all other government people and all others who speak at our meetings. Thanks to the people of Te- hama County also who sup- port us. — June Cooper, Red Bluff Shasta celebrating Hispanic heritage is racism Editor: There are more than 100 cultural groups in these United States, yet racism is alive and well by celebrating only Hispanic and Black her- itage. In our second home city of Indianapolis, there has been for several decades a Black Expo week, with about 100,000 black visitors, a Black Expo parade, a Black Expo Af- rican-American college foot- ball game and a week of Con- vention Center activities. Can you imagine the outcry if there were a White Expo, a White lawyers association or a White heritage day? The President has expanded racism by appointing a major- ity of African American de- partment head candidates. What happened to diversity? Colleges, cities and our fed- eral department heads should end the era of racism by recog- nizing the heritage of all res- idents instead of two majori- ties. — Joseph Neff, Corning Humanitarian crisis in Europe Editor: Daily newscasts abound with reports of a growing mi- gration crisis developing in Europe, where millions of ref- ugees and displaced human beings are desperately seek- ing asylum, to a degree that even exceeds numbers and ex- tent during the post WWII era 70 years ago. One of the sad- dest and most tragic remind- ers, beamed around the globe, was that of little innocent Alan Kurdi, a 3-year-old Syrian boy who is sadly one of many who perished and whose bodies washed up on a beach at the Mediterranean Sea. Most striking is the fact, that our entire news media has somehow elected to treat the roots of this human catastro- phe and tragedy in terms of an unexpected, unavoidable act of nature. Reportedly, the origin of the majority of those poor souls is Syria, where a total of 10 mil- lion citizens which is half its population, has been uprooted and rendered homeless, how- ever their exodus is also joined by folks who once called Af- ghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Ye- men their home. Notably, all these countries have one over- arching experience in com- mon: i.e. they were, without provocation, invaded or at- tacked by the U.S. either di- rectly or indirectly and to- tally destroyed solely as a re- sult of Uncle Sam's insatiable pursuit of a political agenda in the Middle East, which in CIA parlance is his quest for Full Spectrum Dominance. As a result, all consequences and the attendant fallout, such as a death toll in excess of a million and the enormous amount of human suffering which was generated in the process be damned and dis- missed. Vae victis. The destabilizing collat- eral damage inflicted upon EU States by the avalanche of ref- ugees, especially those strug- gling with fragile economies in the eastern section and former members of the Soviet Bloc, is going to have repercussions that will fester for generations. Moreover, in light of the fact that border skirmishes have al- ready broken out between fel- low EU members in the area, the projection of a scenario de- picting the future collapse and disintegration of a large por- tion of the EU as a result of the chaos, remains a distinct possibility. Kudos to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, which is a country the size of Texas with mere the U.S. population, who immediately declared her nation's willingness to take in 800,000 refugees. Initially, Un- cle Sam volunteered to absorb 3,000 of the migrants he is re- sponsible for creating, but it seems that Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, dispatched an urgent message from the grave which caused Washington to reconsider and increase its commitment to a generous 67,000. Holding the lofty posi- tion of Leader of the Free World, provides an incredible amount of perks, but also car- ries such liabilities as to de- clare mea culpa, take respon- sibility when things have gone awry, be prepared to stand up, make amends and take reme- dial action where and when necessary. Unloading a sizable portion of the task — I broke it, you fix it style — upon the back of our friends in Eu- rope, who may some day rue their affiliation with the U.S., should never be part of the equation. — Joe Bahlke, Red Bluff Letters to the editor Whether or not climate change is an apt description or global warming is more accurate, the fact remains we have not picked up our own global room, and that fact is causing us problems, both presently and in the future. State and National Assemblyman James Galla- gher, 2060 Talbert Drive, Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 895-4217, http://ad03.asmrc.org/ Senator Jim Nielsen, 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, senator. nielsen@senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sacramento 95814, 916 445-2841, fax 916 558- 3160, governor@governor.ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug La- Malfa, 507 Cannon House Of- fice Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202 225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Fein- stein, One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415 393- 0707, fax 415 393-0710 U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, 1700 Montgomery St., San Fran- cisco 94111, 510 286-8537, fax 202 224-0454 Local Tehama County Supervisors, 527-4655 District 1, Steve Chamblin, Ext. 3015 District 2, Candy Carlson, Ext. 3014 District 3, Dennis Garton, Ext. 3017 District 4, Bob Williams, Ext. 3018 District 5, Burt Bundy, Ext. 3016 Red Bluff City Manager, Rich- ard Crabtree, 527-2605, Ext. 3061 Corning City Manager, John Brewer, 824-7033 Your officials Joe Harrop OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Saturday, October 3, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4