To the editor: I thank the L.A. Times for publishing the special print edition section Our Climate Change Challenge on Sept. 15. Stories such as these should be on the front page every day. The best line was this quote in the piece on fast fashion: “The most sustainable thing you could do is not buy things.”
Unfortunately, that would ruin our economy.
For too long, however, the prices we pay for products have not reflected their true costs. They account for materials, labor, transportation and marketing — but they should also include disassembly, repair, destruction, recycling and final storage.
Plastics may seem inexpensive, but are they truly? What of the health costs of microplastics and phthalates? What of the costs of cleaning up our beaches and oceans?
Products of all sorts are too cheap and easy to replace. Consumers just throw them out and buy another. If prices included the true cost to the planet, perhaps people would be motivated to repair more products. Manufacturers should be required to provide replacement parts and make their products easier to repair.
Yes, a vacuum cleaner would be more expensive, but it will be easier to repair and won’t soon litter the streets and alleys along with refrigerators, microwaves, washers and dryers.
Andrew Tilles, Studio City
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To the editor: The sun provides Earth’s quota of energy. All of life competes for this energy, while abiding by two strict rules of nature.
Rule 1 is energy cannot be created or destroyed (conservation of energy). Rule 2 is every energy process makes things messier (entropy).
Before humans emerged, nature stored incredible amounts of its creations (plankton and plants) in the Earth. Over time, pressure and heat transformed what had been made with low-density solar energy into high-density fossil fuels.
Humans learned how to use that energy to do whatever we wanted, and we invented capitalism, saying that Earth’s resources are infinite, violating nature’s rules.
We cannot make more energy than nature provides, and it’s getting harder and more expensive to find it (Rule 1). The toxic mess we’ve created threatens life everywhere (Rule 2).
Our predicament is that to survive, humans must obey nature’s rules and share with the rest of life on Earth.
Phil Beauchamp, Chino Hills
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To the editor: Kudos to The Times for its special section on climate change. As an environmental historian and climate activist for nearly 20 years, I have not seen any newspaper coverage comparable to this.
I liked the reference to former Times reporter Mark Arax’s fine book “The Dreamt Land.” You quote Arax as saying: “What we’re talking about is fundamentally altering the ‘California Dream’ to respond to something we should have responded to decades ago. Climate change has now given us no choice.”
That’s not quite right.
Based on my research for a book I’m writing, I’m confident the California dream has already evolved to the point that our state is a climate leader nationally and globally. This has been the case at least since Sacramento’s passage of the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.
Thankfully, the California dream of a livable climate seems embedded in the DNA of The Times.
Tom Osborne, Laguna Beach
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To the editor: At the college where I teach, I made a vow to include climate change in all my courses.
I don’t have a degree in sustainability. I don’t understand climate science. I don’t even know how to garden. I teach writing and theater. So I taught cli-fi (climate fiction) romance, improv greenwashing and nature walk journaling.
Teaching without addressing climate change used to feel like neglecting reality. Now it feels like betrayal. To ignore the extreme weather, the decades of collective gaslighting by fossil fuel companies, the anxiety and hopelessness of my students, is akin to not yelling fire when I see the flames.
So I understand why some teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District are taking the curriculum into their own hands. But they can’t do this alone.
What will it take for school systems, for those with purse and power, to fund climate education? How much longer are we going to pretend?
Maggie Light, Van Nuys
