• Energy saving success • Check it out • Repent • GI Bill renewal needed Energy saving success During the Kaua‘i County Fair, Apollo Kaua‘i, the grass roots group committed to reducing fossil fuel use and promoting sustainability, invited visitors
• Energy saving success • Check it out • Repent • GI Bill renewal needed
Energy saving success
During the Kaua‘i County Fair, Apollo Kaua‘i, the grass roots group committed to reducing fossil fuel use and promoting sustainability, invited visitors to its booth to complete an energy savings audit. Approximately 600 individuals and families participated in this exercise. The 10 question survey included such items as using the clothes line, riding the bus or car pooling, using cloth bags when shopping, buying local food and using energy efficient light bulbs.
We are pleased to report that over 70 percent of participants were engaged in significant (more then one-half) of these energy saving activities.
We appreciate that this may be a select population of individuals who attended the fair and visited the exhibits. Moreover, all points on the survey were not equal (having a solar hot water heater clearly yields a greater energy saving then using cloth shopping bags). None-the-less, the majority of Kaua‘i residents participating in our survey are working to save energy and we congratulate them and encourage additional effort for all residents.
Mahalo nui loa to the four businesses who donate door prizes for Apollo to give away at the fair. These are businesses that are supporting a more sustainable Kaua‘i in the way they do business and by doing more to ‘keep it local’: Green Car, Hukilau Lanai, Hoku Foods and Time Super Market. Congratulations to the door prize winners: Jolene Freitas, Crystal Smazit, Eric Notebo, and Terry Inouye.
Laurel Brier, Doug Wilmore, Co-chairs, Apollo Kaua‘i
Check it out
Check the hand that insinuates hippies, Superferry, football lights, GMO, and JoAnn Yukimura are part of Kaua‘i’s demise (“Skewed look,” Letters, Aug. 18). Yes, those are your three fingers.
Don’t whine about things that evidently you know nothing about. If it wasn’t for Ms. Yukimura, things would be even worse than they are now. If you need to blame someone, Lingle is the one who shoved Superferry down our throats and that directly affected our children with resultant furloughs.
The “civil uprising” related to the Superferry being blocked from breaching the harbor entrance was a classic example of “We the People.” I was proud to be part of the mix… preparing for more in the future.
The quiet island of the ‘60s has more than doubled its population. Plantation lifestyle is forever lost and it is disappointing that more STOPs, like that of the Superferry haven’t been placed.
Currently, ongoing development, specifically the South Shore, continues to slip through the cracks, lacking integrity, as seems to be normal practice, blatantly demolishing heiau as they have or forever displacing that which was pristine.
It might interest you to know that the Kikiaola Project is ongoing for another 20 to 30 years, is 5,000 units strong and is only required to abide by outdated EIS protocol 20 years old; however, on another island, a much smaller 1,000 unit project is required to have, as was the Superferry, an up-to-date EIS.
So many things need to be investigated and researched finding about 90 percent has integrity issues.
Debra Kekaualua, Kapa‘a
Repent
In the Aug. 25 Forum, Al Carbonel figuratively pulled down Howard Tolbe’s pants and exposed him to be supremely uninformed on the issues surrounding Kaua‘i’s professional teachers.
Mr. Tolbe, in his Aug. 21 letter, had produced a superficial conclusion so often typical of an outsider to any profession. He deserved his embarrassment and it should have stopped there.
However, Mr. Tolbe suffered additional public exposure by producing a defensive Sept. 2 response. Although matured in years, Mr. Tolbe appears immature in words and completely unrepentant.
The original letter by Mr. Tolbe had a directly stated challenge of the professionalism of our teachers. The reader can easily judge that for themselves. Rather than “reading too much into it,” I found Mr. Carbonel’s response to be informative, with restrained civility in spite of the direct insult.
It is time for Mr. Tolbe to own up to his misinformation and bad behavior. His statement: “…no more response needed…” will not spare him from as many “trips to the woodshed” as it takes.
Pete Antonson, Kalaheo
GI Bill renewal needed
Now comes the problem: what to do with all those gallant young men and women when they come back home.
They are returning to one of the unhealthiest economies this country has ever known and it isn’t getting any better. I do hope the Obama administration is considering a GI Bill renewal as happened at the end of the second world war.
Give these kids the option of going back to school, then prod our home grown philanthropists — Gates, Buffet et al — into investing their bucks in factories mass producing green alternatives to power: windmills, solar panels, hydro electric plants, whatever.
Compete with China’s Solar City in a battle resourceful America can win. Turn Detroit into an All-American Solar City: a peaceful, human friendly, industrial city of the future.
Think of the problems this would solve! It would create jobs, put brilliant young minds to work imagining innovative solutions to the very real issues we face, and kick our addiction to war and oil.
If they need my tax dollar to make this happen, I’m in. How about you?
Bettejo Dux, Kalaheo
