Electronic Books Have an Environmental Impact, Too
I’ve been mulling over Renée Downing’s column (Aug. 19). I agree with much of what she says, but I don’t think that the positive environmental consequences of electronic publishing are as clear-cut as she implies.
Casey Harrell, a Greenpeace information-technology analyst, says there are energy costs associated with e-readers that make it difficult to measure their impact precisely (source: voices.washingtonpost.com/political-bookworm/2010/04/environmental_impact_of_e-book.html). The cost in downed trees is obvious in the case of a paper book, but when you read an e-book on an iPad or Kindle, or download audio files from Audible.com, you’re less aware of the impact of the vast server farms that store these digital resources. But they do exist and use huge amounts of energy, most of it from nonrenewable sources. In addition, Greenpeace says that by 2020, at current growth rates, data centers and telecommunication networks will consume as much energy as France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined (source: www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/news/the-ipad-internet-climate-change-100329).
So, yes, it’s true that, in Renée Downing’s concluding words, “the essence of books is not their physical form; it’s the words that live within them.” It’s not quite so obviously true, however, that the most environmentally friendly way to read those words is in a digital format—not, at least, until a significantly larger amount of our energy comes from clean, renewable sources.
Alice Whittenburg
The Rosemont Mine Would Destroy a Scenic Route
The thought of having a mine tear up pristine areas is very upsetting (“Frog Flurry,” Currents, Aug. 5). Going south on State Route 83 is a beautiful, designated scenic route!
Just stop to think about it: Do you want that gone, torn up by another mine?
Margaret B. Hall
And Now, for Your Entertainment, a Bizarre Rant
Regarding “Mexico City Blues” (Currents, Aug. 26): How convenient of Enrique Peralta to forget the other reasons that illegal aliens come here (they are not “immigrants,” by the way; immigration law defines an “immigrant,” and it is only someone who comes “legally”). Mexican drug- and people-traffickers bring drugs, sex slaves and job thieves here to promote their evil deeds (yes, and the “job thieves” steal jobs Americans had, need and want—we now have 31 MILLION AMERICANS either unemployed or under-employed. Americans have a right to work in their own country at their own jobs! Illegals take jobs in construction, hotels, restaurants, landscaping and lots more. Only 2 percent of agricultural workers the last few years were illegal aliens).
“ALL” illegal aliens commit not one but many crimes: first by sneaking over the border, then choosing to commit fraud by buying and repeatedly using their phony documents with which they get “free” medical care (many times putting hospitals out of business), steal our jobs, and take our benefits and social services. “WE” should be choosing who comes here, but Mexican illegals force themselves on us and don’t care about this nation, just what they can get from us.
Then there are those who come because they think they are going to “take over” (called “la Reconquista”). They are told they owned this land for 40,000 years, but Mexico only owned this land for 24 years—the least of everyone! Even Spain owned it for 300 years. Their indigenous were never up here! They feared the Apaches. The movement of “Aztlan” is based on lies.
The reason Mexico is in the state it is in is because few people have respect for law over there: “Nepotism” and “la mordida” are rife! Then they come here by spitting on our laws and try to make this into Mexico and wonder why Americans do not like job-stealing lawbreakers. They try to change the subject by calling “us” racists when they are the racists who hate the “gringos” and see nothing wrong in breaking laws.
SB 1070 catches criminals. If most of those criminals happen to be a certain color (because they make up the majority of those breaking our laws), so be it! That is not racist; that is “catching criminals.” If you protect America, they will call you “racist.” If you are an illegal alien, they instead call you an “undocumented immigrant” (LOL!)—manipulation of our words to manipulate our minds. Mexico might not be very good at running their own country, but they excel in wrecking someone else’s and then changing the words.
Laura Leighton
A Comment From a Reader at TucsonWeekly.com
Regarding Danehy, Sept. 9:
It is primarily because of the Democrats that families have to work two to four jobs to keep their heads above water in the first place, and Danehy—like all Democrats—wants to rob the people of their hard-earned wages in the guise of “Social Security,” when, in fact, the money goes straight into the general fund, where Democrats spend it—and our nation’s budget—into oblivion. The worst aspect of the Republican Party is that they try to be too much like Democrats. It’s time both parties restore the Constitution of the United States as the outer limits of government authority—at all levels of government—and let the people keep what they earn and do with it as they wish. … Obama and his cronies in Congress are sociopaths and need to be locked up.
—frdmftr
This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2010.
The audacity of the comment from “frdmftr” is astonishing. Sure, Democrats spend money, as do Republicans, from local to federal levels of government. However, the vast majority of those expenditures (yeah, certainly, one can point to obvious examples of waste and fraud, which are inevitable, due to human frailty) are directed at the needs and desires of the public that finances those outlays via various taxes.
What the tea-party whiners, libertarians and other purveyors of anarchy seek is the elimination of government altogether. Their fetishistic cries of “restoring liberty” and “freedom” lack credibility, in that they consistently embrace the traditional right-wing disdain for women, gays, people of color and other minorities in favor of preserving at all costs the supreme power of well-to-do caucasian gentlemen. Their mantra is simple…freedom for ME to do whatever the hell I want, but not necessarily for YOU!
These mental midgets (the true sociopaths in our political arena) will do whatever is necessary to unravel elements of the 75-year-old safety net which essentially established the American middle class. (The fact that many of these tea-drinkers are middle class themselves is the great conundrum of our time.)
Their sainted savior, Ronald Reagan, swept into office thirty years ago determined to undermine the legacy of his supposed idol, Franklin Roosevelt.
They ignore the historical evidence that Reagan, faced with the task of actually GOVERNING, eventually had to raise taxes himself several times. Conservatives’ ongoing efforts to destroy the progressive tax system are the single largest contributor to crippling deficits. Social Security, probably the most successful federal program in history, is NOT the problem. The projected shortfall (still many years away) could easily be remedied by expanding withholding beyond the current $106,800 income level cut-off. In fact, if Social Security taxes were being FAIRLY collected, the checks of current recipients could actually be INCREASED, which would most assuredly help the country rebound from the great recession.
America as a whole suffers due to the naked greed of the top 1%, which funnels millions of dollars to high-powered lawyers in order to avoid paying taxes while the rest of us have to either make up the difference or watch helplessly as the country sinks further into debt. Avaricious conservatives, mostly Republican but including a fair number of Democrats, care nothing about the nation itself; they are only interested in maintaining and expanding their personal wealth and power.
And, by the way, paying for universal healthcare would be no problem if we as a nation could finally rid ourselves of the largest welfare program ever created: the gargantuan military-industrial complex about which we were fairly warned by a president who was titular head of what ONCE was an honorable entity, the Republican party.
I agree with Roger Rabbit that one aspect of the far-right is often the claim of “liberty for me but not for you,” or, worse, “liberty only exists if you do it my way.” But if he thinks that definition applies to the Tea Party, he needs to do a little more research. I believe he will find less of what he calls “traditional right wing disdain for women, gays, people of color and other minorities” and more disdain for a government that wants to be a nanny state for everyone and robs everyone blind to achieve that level of autocratic control over ‘what’s good for you’.
I would recommend Roger Rabbit go back and read why we have a Constitutional America in the first place: It was to put a stop, once and for all, to direct taxation of the people. For 126 years, from the signing of the United States Constitution in 1787 to the illegal, unconstitutional, and unratified 16th and 17th Amendments and Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (in which our monetary system was turned back over to the same banking dynasty that ran the world for 500 years before the American Revolution), the U.S. government got along just fine on tariffs imposed upon interstate commerce and seigniorage, and America was the most prosperous nation on the face of the earth. The average working man, woman, and child improved their standard of living more in one hundred years 1800-1900 than they had in the previous 25 centuries. Wages (gold and silver coin) were wealth, and unskilled laborers paid for skills for their children, and skilled laborers paid for professional education for their children, and captains of industry were born. Then the banking dynasties we fought off in the American Revolution came back in, and since then every dollar of wage is a dollar of debt and must eventually be repaid to the Federal Reserve. Taxes serve no purpose but to prevent inflation, caused by printing money and spending it into circulation without production of anything of commensurate value.
The Tea Partiers are not disdainful of women, gays, or minorities, and we have many women, gays, and minorities in our movement. We are merely disdainful of a corrupt government that regards us as its personal cash cow.