Cars, development and doubt

Re “A permanent drought seen for Southwest,” April 6

Clearly, we are in trouble. My first thoughts were two suggestions recently made to remedy our traffic problem: widening the 405 Freeway and making Pico and Olympic boulevards one-way streets. Both ideas are foolish and myopic. Both promote the continued use of cars in lieu of thinking creatively about public transit. More lanes create more crowded lanes. Saving money in the short run and making Pico and Olympic one-way in no way ensures that those streets, as well as the surrounding neighborhoods, won’t get clogged.

What we need is a Manhattan Project focus on creating a nearly pollution-free public transit system. Encouraging people to drive their cars will simply continue to speed that other rapid transit: the “runaway train” of global warming.

DOROTHY CLARK

Los Angeles

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Isn’t it time to declare a moratorium on new real estate development in places like the Inland Empire? The sprawl of bedroom communities expands ever eastward. Situated in sun-parched regions like Moreno Valley, they will consume enormous quantities of increasingly scarce water.

While conservative elements of our society quibble over the existence of global warming, we allow real estate developers to dig our grave ever deeper.

BRIAN MASSON

Harbor City

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Let’s see -- the dust bowls of the 1930s and droughts of the ‘50s just happened but may become “the norm in the Southwest United States ... because of global warming.” Seems like global warming is to blame for the fevered reporting of The Times. There’s virtually nothing that can’t be blamed (including freezing) on global warming.

What concerns me is the news that the “second of four” United Nations global warming reports was released Friday in Brussels. This from the same do-nothing, dictator-influenced group we know and love.

STUART WEISS

Beverly Hills