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This year, resolve to
help the environment
Re: “Saving environment is intent of new app” (Page E1, Dec 17).
Thank you for reporting on Sanchali Pal’s app which helps people make sustainable choices in their daily lives. Individual action is laudable. Collective action offers an avenue for greater impact in combating catastrophic climate change.
Many good organizations make coordinated action not just possible, but easy. There’s 350.org, Acterra, Mothers Out Front, Sierra Club and many more.
My favorite for advancing climate-smart legislation is the nonpartisan, nonprofit Citizens’ Climate Lobby. Working strategically in our local CCL chapter — with progressives and conservatives, young and old — gives me hope for a better climate future.
Let’s all resolve to do better, do more, and join with others in 2024.
Anna Koster
San Jose
Reusing gift wrap
solves trash problem
Re: “Christmas gifts turbocharge our trash problem. How I cope” (Page A6, Dec. 21).
I’m from a New England family and was raised on this mantra: Use it up. Wear it out. Make do. Or do without.
We’d use the same wrapping paper and boxes again and again. With three kids and three adults, there could have been a lot of trash. There wasn’t. It was smoothed out and used again. And again. Trash? Hardly any.
Margie Stephens
Milpitas
Check kids’ bike gear
to ensure safety
One more present for your kids:
• Raise the seat on the bicycle they were so happily riding in September. They have probably grown. Riding a bike that is too small for you is more work.
• Check the adjustment on their helmet. Properly fit, it will cover their forehead, not stop at their hairline, and the straps will keep it snug.
Best of all, teach them to do these things and encourage them to help their friends keep their bikes and helmets in good shape. Their lives could depend on it.
Julie Groves
Los Gatos
No military aid until
Israel protects Gazans
Growing up in the 1960s and watching a lot of PBS documentaries on World War II and the Holocaust, I have always thought that the creation of Israel was a beautiful thing. I realize now that although I do understand that intentions were good, there was a dark side, a largely untold story of the treatment of Palestinians during this time.
In the years since it has largely been U.S. policy to support the Israeli cause completely without question and that has led to an arrogance in Israeli policies. Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel is now involved in a horrible occupation with the innocent of Gaza suffering for the sins of Hamas. Biden’s initial knee-jerk support of Israel misses understanding the complexities and nuance needed for meaningful resolution. The United States should deny military support to Israel until Israel shows compassion for the innocent of Gaza.
Robert McClelland
Gilroy
Letters show wishful
thinking on Gaza
Re: “Send Israel’s military aid to Ukraine” and “Rules of engagement need a rewrite” (Page A6, Dec. 22).
The letters “Send Israel’s military aid to Ukraine” and “Rules of engagement need a rewrite” are both overly simplistic and, perhaps unintentionally, pro-Hamas.
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Readers remember ‘Mr. Roadshow,’ Gary Richards
“Hamas should be punished, but not the civilians who just happen to live there” is exactly the logic used by Hamas to make a success of the Oct. 7 killings of Israeli civilians. The use of a civilian shield is intentional, not happenstance.
Benjamin Netanyahu does not desire to wipe out the Palestinian people. It’s the other way around. The most likely compromise to end the invasion is the installation of the Palestinian Authority, under U.N. guidance, to replace Hamas’ governance of Gaza.
All 5 million Palestinians memorizing rules of engagement constitutes ridiculous wishful thinking. There is not even general agreement on which set of rules should apply. The letter doesn’t say who should do the rewriting, or whether it would be in time to mitigate the current crisis.
Fred Gutmann
Cupertino
