In recent weeks I have become concerned that I am becoming inured to the growing litany of climate disasters and suffering both here at home and across the world. We all have many reasons to be alarmed these days, but we must keep moving ahead on climate action in Congress.
In the U.S., we are facing worsening drought in one of our leading regions of food production and other bad news. But recently I was taken aback by a photo in the Tribune of a farmer in Kenya, frantically and ineffectually attempting to chase away a swarm of locusts attacking his crop (“Effects from climate change to worsen in Africa, UN says,” March 8). Much as we see evidence ourselves of the changing climate’s impacts close to home, the impacts in other areas, such as Africa, are more extreme and more tragic.
Africa has contributed relatively little to greenhouse emissions. Yet the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report has predicted Saharan flooding, heat and drought increasing. Africa already struggles with poverty and food shortages, and farmers and fishermen are facing more challenging conditions with each passing year. Crop yields are down, and added to this are conflicts, instability and economic crises. If warming continues, children in particular will suffer from severe malnutrition, stunted growth and stunted cognitive development. The report on Africa goes on to speak of loss of ice cover on mountains, impacts on wildlife and loss of species.
Economic sectors such as tourism, transportation and energy will be harmed. An entire continent with 17% of global population will have its future undermined and put at risk. It is incumbent on the developed world to take leadership and responsibility for stabilizing the climate to protect all parts of the world such as Africa and the Pacific islands, which are at the mercy of global climate change that has largely been caused by the developed world.
Illinois U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth and U.S. representatives from our region are working to pass a climate package of responses to warming. President Joe Biden also vows major emissions reductions.
For our own future and a real first step to a solution for the rest of the world, we must have a rising tax on fossil fuels that will pay households and incentivize a new economy based on renewable energy. It can’t happen soon enough.
— Laura Haule, Warrenville
Landlords burdened by process
The Tribune’s excellent article on affordable housing provided by small landlords (“Pandemic erodes affordable rentals,” March 7) fails to mention one important obstacle to the continued viability of such housing — Chicago’s Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance and the overly complicated process for evicting bad tenants created both by the ordinance and by the dysfunctional court system. Many small landlords go under because these obstacles make evicting bad tenants in a timely manner impossible.
The inconvenient truth is that there are bad tenants, and they are empowered by these obstacles to victimize small landlords in particular — folks who need the rent money to pay their mortgage, property taxes, utilities and the other costs of operating a property. How long could you go without your paycheck?
In this city, it takes, on average, six months, often longer, to evict a bad tenant. That’s six months without the rental income needed to stay afloat. Even when you have an open-and-shut case against a tenant, trying to get into court is the first obstacle. The new website for the clerk’s office is not user-friendly. I am a paralegal and have friends who are attorneys, and if we find it difficult to navigate this website, imagine the difficulty experienced by those untrained in the law! Even when you get into court, the sheriff’s office rarely serves the tenant, which means hiring a special process server — thereby adding both cost and time to the process. When you finally get a judgment for eviction, you’ll wait months for the sheriff to carry it out.
I’m all for protecting the rights of tenants against the bad operators, but the ordinance and the court system need to be fair to both tenants and landlords. The current ordinance empowers abusive and deadbeat tenants — at the expense of small landlords in particular. Both the ordinance and the court system need an overhaul that preserves the rights of tenants while also enabling landlords to evict bad tenants in a timely manner.
Ultimately, a fair system benefits both the landlord and the tenant. We landlords can afford to be more lenient with tenants experiencing a legitimate hardship when we know there is a system in place to prevent the bad tenants from taking advantage of us.
— Paul N. Eichwedel, landlord, Chicago
Guaranteed income a bad idea
The $42 million guaranteed-income pilot program for suburban residents announced by Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle is akin to giving a drug addict free heroin instead of helping the person to embrace being heroin-free forever.
Let’s use our tax funds to help the impoverished: “Here is a guaranteed, no-interest, 100% forgivable loan to help you secure solid footing on the economic ladder.” It will be forgiven if you stay away from substance abuse, enroll in a school or learn a trade, secure a job (or a better job), be law-abiding, and, if you have kids in school, make sure your kids attend every day they are healthy. Failure to do these things would cause forfeiture of and loss of renewable status for the loan.
When you reach a sustainable income and quality of life, the loan is forgiven. Democrats and Republicans would support this “hand up” approach.
Many years ago, I gave my three children the option to take their part-time job earnings and spend all of it or give me half, which I would match. When they turned 18, the money was theirs to use for personal expenses in college or anything else. They all took the deal and marveled at how their nest eggs grew.
Another time, I gave my daughter’s friend who was about to drop out of divinity school the money to stay in, under the terms that he repay me only when (and if) he had the financial wherewithal. He is now a respected pastor in a small suburban church. I never was repaid in dollars, but nonetheless, I am proud of the way he is paying it forward.
Let’s stop giving “money without strings” by giving people the tools, education, motivation and personal responsibility to pursue the quality of life that we all want for ourselves and our families.
— Rich Baird, Palatine
The money will run out
Toni Preckwinkle believes she is doing a great service to humankind by launching a guaranteed income program for suburban Cook County residents. She said something I find disheartening:
“I find it quite sensible to give people what they need most when they’re living in poverty: money.”
And this is all just a temporary program using one-time funds, so that the people who benefit will be right back where they were before the program started when the money runs out.
What poor people need most are jobs and self-respect. Giving people money for no reason but that they need it only encourages less work and less self-confidence, and more dependence and more entitlement.
What is today a program, tomorrow becomes a right. And there isn’t enough money to be had to pay for all these rights.
— Larry Craig, Wilmette
Invasive species choking trees
The letter writer who complained about woodland clearing (“Why take down so many trees?” March 7) should stop in at a forest preserve instead of giving a drive-by opinion. If he looked at one of the areas next to those being cleared in the forest preserve, he would notice dense stands of invasive buckthorn and honeysuckle between the trees. Underneath their foliage, the soil is bare and sterile.
In addition to poisoning wildflowers and wildlife such as frogs and salamanders that used to live in the understory, these invasive species promote soil erosion, prevent trees from reproducing and cause other harm to our natural areas.
I salute the landowners and volunteers who are removing these pest plants and restoring our woods, prairies and wetlands to ecological health.
— Jeff Weiss, Buffalo Grove
Reacher is no true hero
Regarding John Warner’s Biblioracle column (“‘Station Eleven’, ‘Reacher’ are TV adaptations of books on watch list,” March 6): I am surprised at Warner for enjoying and recommending the Jack Reacher books and now Amazon Prime’s series.
I did read the first one according to chronological order, “The Affair.” When Reacher points a gun at a killer, a bad, bad man, and shoots him point-blank in the forehead, I lost it. What kind of hero is this? There is a scene in the current “Batman” film in which Batman says to Catwoman as she is about to do the very same thing to an evil guy: “If you do this, you become no better than him.”
Am I the only person in America who thinks a hero should have moral values and not be a self-serving vigilante? Just why is it these books by Lee Child are so wildly popular? In “The Affair,” Reacher goes on to kill more men. Cold-bloodedly.
Saving the day should not involve murder. And that murderer should not be presented to us as a hero.
So I would ask Warner: What do you want in a man who saves the day? Justice at any price? Warner writes of Reacher: “The world made right through the will of a determined man.” Heaven help us.
I’m sure Adolf Hitler, and now Vladimir Putin, thought the same thing.
— Catherine Wilson, Elmhurst
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