Letters to the Editor: Let legislators know we all care about the climate crisis.

Everyone can help

The climate crisis is not just an environmental problem that sits beside all others. Rather fossil fuel pollution and climate disruption are problems of human health, the economy, national security, and social justice that will affect the future of our children and grandchildren. You have the power to help. You can make climate-positive personal choices (e.g. weatherize your home; drive a fuel efficient car; rank vegetables over meat —these choices also help your health and pocketbook). You can also take political action. Tell your city council and legislators that you demand clean water, air, and energy, and that you insist they respond to the climate crisis. Right now pending federal legislation will impact the recovery of Kentucky coal communities (tell legislators to support House Resolutions 3876, 2156 and 4248, and Senate Resolution 3172), and pending Kentucky legislation will impact access to affordable energy (support House Bill 126), access to renewable energy (support House Bill 323), and the unnecessary use of plastics (support House Bill 85 and Senate Bill 68). Go to https://fixwhatsbroke.org/ and http://kyconservation.org/ for a description of bills, and ways to contact your legislators. Let them know you care and are watching.

Cathy Clement, Lexington

Basketball memories

I am writing regarding the article in the Feb. 14 Herald-Leader about Dunbar High School of Somerset. In 1950, I was a senior at Mount Victory High School and a guard on the basketball team coached by principal Jame M. Holt. Our colors were blue and gold and I was number 77. We played two games against Dunbar. They were no contest for Dunbar, which won by a wide margin, but we learned a lot that helped us win a three-overtime game at Eubank.

Bob Edwards, Lexington

Electoral college bias

It’s 2020 and there will be more arguments about the electoral college and whether it has “served us well” or is a monstrosity. The truth is that at the constitutional convention in 1787, the small states let the larger states know that if they didn’t get special concessions in the new Constitution, they wouldn’t join the new union and they might make treaties with foreign powers against the United States (Spain, France, Britain). So the big states gave them goodies: equal representation in the Senate, and representation in the electoral college equal to House members plus the “constant two” senators from each state. So today, a voter in Vermont, with a 2010 population of 625,880, has 6.91 times as much voting power in a Senate election as voter in Kentucky, and 59.6 times as much as a voter in California. And (when you count in the House seats) a voter in Vermont has 2.6 times the voting power in the electoral college as a voter in Kentucky, and 3.25 times as much as a voter in California. Both the electoral college and the Senate were biased and unfair then, and they are even more biased and unfair now.

Glenn Rainey, Richmond

‘60s parallels

The president was, as expected, acquitted in his impeachment trial. The vehemence with which he proclaimed his innocence since before the verdict, and his proclamations of that verdict as proof of innocence, remind me of what I saw in the news in the 1960s. Whites who committed heinous crimes against blacks in that era (and long before) could count on their peers to find them not guilty, if the legal process even got to trial. These peers often believed there was no crime (unless the races were reversed), sometimes they were afraid of retaliation, sometimes they were bribed, some just went along to get along.

Murder and mayhem are far worse crimes than attempted bribery and obstruction of justice, but there are at least two similarities between those trials then and the president’s trial. First, there is no doubt that the accused did what was stated. Second, those jurors have aided and abetted wrongdoing, in whatever combination of those who think the defendant’s actions are just and right, those who are afraid of retaliation, those who are just afraid, those who want things swept out of sight.

Was it wrong for the House to bring charges, given the inevitable? To attempt to have real justice?

Steele Hinton, Flemingsburg