Some green ideas to chew on

Re "With low-carbon diets, consumers step to the plate," April 22

It was terrific to finally read about how eating more greens is the best way to be more green. Eating your veggies and reducing your consumption of meat certainly is an easy way to save our planet for future generations. This is a choice that we can all easily make and is a lot cheaper than buying solar panels or a new hybrid car.

There is another simple choice Californians can make that helps not only the environment but the animals that are raised for food. Voters will have the chance in November to pass a ballot initiative that would reduce the suffering of farm animals by providing pigs, calves and hens enough room to stand up, lie down, turn around and extend their limbs. This important proposition is supported by the Humane Society of the United States, family farmers and countless veterinarians. I'm looking forward to voting "yes" on the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act and hope my fellow Californians feel the same.

Jane Garrison

Redondo Beach



The Times' otherwise awareness-raising piece makes a rather glaring omission of the obvious: If you really want to reduce your carbon footprint, you'll switch to a vegan diet. The new, inconvenient truth is that eating meat can never be green.

Mikko Alanne

Los Angeles



The Times does a real disservice by failing to put the carbon emissions arguments into perspective. Here are a few facts: In 1944, there were more than 25 million dairy cows producing milk in the United States. Today, there are a little more than 9 million, a 64% reduction. Can auto manufacturers make that same claim? Through improvements in cow health and comfort, today's dairy farms have made the modern milking cow more efficient than her ancestors. Those 9 million cows today produce 8 billion more gallons of milk a year than the 25 million cows did in 1944.

Add to that the enormous progress we've seen in renewable manure-to-energy technology, and farmers start looking more green than the Average Joe. Of course, a balanced story like that may not make for front-page journalism.

Rob Vandenheuvel

General Manager

Milk Producers Council

Chino



I had a meatless Earth Day experience during lunch at my university, which contracts with Bon Appetit. It was highly disappointing to my palate and suspicious because milk products were still available. Clara Peller had it right: "Where's the beef?"

Michael Schulteis

Lake Forest

The reality of foreign policy

Re "Meet John 'Dubya' McCain," Opinion, April 23

Peter Scoblic ignores many of the finer, yet more important, points when it comes to adopting a more realpolitik strategy toward foreign policy. Scoblik dismisses John McCain's idea for a League of Democracies as being a way to avoid dealing with countries that operate "with different interests and values."

McCain's proposal may be a tad fantastic, but the thinking behind it is solid. If "different interests and values" mean that such countries ignore the rule of law, laugh at democracy and scorn freedom of speech and other values we take for granted, why should the United States deal with them in a forum that purports to support the values these countries ignore? I would also note that as a newly sworn-in citizen of the United States, reading the Declaration of Independence brought home to me why it is important that America simply cannot ignore lack of freedom, human rights and injustice around the world by playing the realpolitik game.

Although the Bush administration can be rightly criticized in this arena (Guantanamo is but one example), it doesn't mean that a more principled politician such as McCain can't do a better job.

James Wall

Cherry Hills Village, Colo.



Although I'm far from an apologist for the Bush administration, the ongoing canard that the administration ignored the "international community" before going to war in Iraq continually mouthed by the likes of Scoblic is demonstrably false.

United Nations Resolution 1441, passed by the Security Council in 2002, recognized "the threat Iraq's noncompliance with council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security."

This sounds to me like the entire Security Council, not just George W. Bush, recognized that Saddam Hussein was indeed one of the "forces of evil."

Resolution 1441 also promised that Iraq would "face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations."

Based on Scoblic's writing, I guess his idea of "serious consequences" would have been for the United Nations to mandate that Hussein use fluorescent light bulbs in his palaces.

Scoblic's "can't we all just get along" approach to foreign policy is naive and dangerous.

Michael Leb

Pasadena

DWP customers should pay more

Re "Electric utilities waging a power struggle," April 20

It is fair for Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers to pay more for electricity. For years, its rates have been artificially low because of the DWP's purchase of cheap, dirty coal power.

While people living downwind from the out-of-state coal plants are paying the cost with their health, DWP customers pay a low flat rate, which does nothing to discourage waste.

The private utilities have tiered rates, with the highest ones just more than 30 cents a kilowatt hour.

This market approach is the direction DWP should take in implementing the rate increases it will inevitably have to charge. Rather than across-the-board increases, the DWP should charge a low rate for the first 300 to 500 kilowatt hours a month with steep increases for usage above that. Anyone using more energy should be willing to pay the full cost of the power.

Paul Scott

Santa Monica



One way to keep the rates down: The DWP should stop sending out glossy brochures with customer bills and those annual reports. How many trees have to die for this exercise? We want water and power, and nobody is interested in looking at smiling executives in hard hats. The brochures go straight into the trash. It's a shameful waste.

Another question: Why does the DWP accept checks but not credit card or bank account deductions? If the gas company can do it, why can't the DWP?

Karin Howard

Los Angeles

Population growth and immigration

Re "An ugly way to rough up the pope," Opinion, April 23

Tim Rutten is right that the immigration debate sometimes turns ugly, but he ignores his own culpability as he attacks opposing commentators who want to enforce immigration laws. Why not address real issues, such as immigration's overwhelming contribution to California's population growth?

News articles frequently cover problems caused by overpopulation, yet The Times refuses to recognize the word is politically correct.

Instead, people who connect the dots are labeled as xenophobes or racists. While the political winds shift toward reducing immigration, these people are now labeled demagogues by strident columnists who cannot believe that decent citizens want to reduce today's unprecedented immigration numbers.

How about offering more light and less heat on serious public issues, instead of diving into the gutter where you claim your opponents live?

Kenneth Pasternack

Santa Barbara

Democrats are losing ground

Re "Primary toll," editorial, April 24

Conventional wisdom suggests that it is going to take a united Democratic front to defeat GOP Sen. John McCain in November. If true, then let me say it: Democratic Party unity is a matter of national security.

How else can you explain it when the presumptive Republican nominee says the United States may need to remain in Iraq for 100 years, or that his solution to the nation's economic meltdown is to take a wait-and-see approach? McCain's positions promote national insecurity. By moving quickly to bring the fighting between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to an end, Democrats will be less likely to squander their political opportunity.

If they delay and let the campaign hostilities continue, I am afraid my party has little chance of winning back the White House this fall.

Denny Freidenrich

Laguna Beach



The Times calls the race for the Democratic nomination "a war of attrition." We citizens call it democracy. Perhaps The Times would be happier with a single-party system and a single candidate, a single leader beneath whom we might all unite (democratically, of course). We could then vote for this candidate once every four years until he or she died.

Dumb.

Phillip Good

Huntington Beach