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Readers write: two sides of climate change, more to roar about than Cecil

Letters to the editor for the Aug. 31, 2015 weekly magazine.

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Wilfredo Lee/AP/File
Lifeguard stands along the beach at Haulover Park in Miami Beach, Fla.

Two views of global warming
Regarding the Aug. 10 cover story, “Holding back the sea”: This article was a vast improvement from other Monitor articles in the attention and acknowledgment of the seriousness of climate change. I look forward to more frequent, factual coverage of this issue. If you delve deeply into the science of global warming you will discover that most predictions are way too conservative. James Hansen, a former NASA scientist, argues that limiting global warming to even just 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F.) is dangerous and not sustainable for a healthy climate. Every issue of the Monitor should have something on the issue of climate change. Scientists are seeing effects that are frightening (permafrost thawing and releasing methane that could be unstoppable). The public depends on high-quality journalism to bring them the news they need to hear. 
Marta Meengs
Missoula, Mont.

Regarding “Holding back the sea”: I am tired of articles that report (man-made) climate change as fact. It is not fact. There is no data to support the theory. It is a hoax! The Monitor loses credibility and my respect with every article that assumes man-made climate change is real.
Drew Farenwald
Jarrettsville, Md.

Cecil’s death a wake-up call
Regarding the Aug. 17 & 24 One Week article “Death of a lion stirs response”: The global outrage occasioned by the killing of a lion in Africa is a reminder of just how derelict we are in not responding appropriately to the shooting deaths of so many Americans. During the Bosnian War in the 1990s, an opinion piece published in Commentary magazine (“If Bosnians Were Dolphins,” by Edward N. Luttwak, October 1993) decried the lack of empathy for Bosnian Muslims being slaughtered by Serbs contrasted with our concern for dolphins. Let the death of this lion galvanize an overdue effort to confront the risk of gun deaths in the “land of the free and home of the brave.”
Paul Bloustein
Cincinnati

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

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