• Thanksgiving is important • Locavore love • Giving Thanks day • Create a county climate change commission • Kaua‘i needs a guardian Thanksgiving is important Why do people skip Thanksgiving? I think people skip Thanksgiving because right after Halloween
• Thanksgiving is important • Locavore love • Giving Thanks day • Create a county climate change commission • Kaua‘i needs a guardian
Thanksgiving is important
Why do people skip Thanksgiving? I think people skip Thanksgiving because right after Halloween they talk or think about Christmas.
I think Thanksgiving is important because you thank and care for your family.
Christian Thompson, age 7
Kalaheo
Locavore love
Congratulations on the best locavore event ever! The Garden Island Range and Food Festival presented Sunday highlighted what can be done with our local meats and vegetables in fine fashion. Every entree was tasty and creative, using ‘ulu and kalo and even parsnips to great advantage.
This event certainly points a way to sustainability for our island. The website is also beautiful and well done. Could have more of those wonderful recipes however.
We look forward to next year’s event.
Eleanor Snyder
Lawa‘i
Giving Thanks day
Thanksgiving, two words: “Thanks and Giving”
I like to call the holiday “Giving Thanks day.”
Every day we should give,
every day we should thank.
Whether it be Thanksgiving or “Giving Thanks,” this day has my approval for the best holiday ever invented.
On the contrary, be weary of the day after Thanksgiving, commonly called Black Friday, where people crush, flatten and trample each other in shopping frenzies for material goods just 24 hours after being thankful for what they already have.
Happy Giving Thanks day!
James “Kimo” Rosen
Kapa‘a
Create a county climate change commission
On Sunday, the World Bank published a report: “Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4 Degree Celsius Warmer World Must be Avoided.”
The report opens with a personal plea from the president of the World Bank: “It is my hope that this report shocks us into action.”
What follows his foreword is 100 pages detailing the devastating effects of a 4 degree increase in global temperatures, including: unprecedented sea level rise, ocean acidification and the subsequent dissolving of coral reefs, heat extremes of up to 9 degrees higher than today’s record highs, lower per acre agriculture yields and a 35 percent reduction in arable land, increased frequency of high-intensity tropical cyclones, exacerbated water scarcity and irreversible loss of biodiversity along with the disastrous economic effects that those would bring.
The foreword to the report ends with this: “The solutions lie in effective risk management and ensuring all our work, all our thinking, is designed with the threat of a 4 degree Celsius world in mind.”
This is not some distant and inconceivable future. As a conservative estimate, those changes are supposed to occur within this century. And every National Academy of Sciences on the planet along with 98 percent of climate scientists are saying the same thing.
Hawai‘i, due to our dependence on tourism, our reliance on industrial style farming of non-edible GMOs, the heavy development of our coastlines and the fact that the large majority of our food comes from at least 2,500 miles away, is arguably the state most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. While we have set ambitious renewable energy targets, we are doing very little in terms of adaptation and preparation for an unstable future. It’s time the county leads the charge by setting up a climate change commission that publishes an annual report of recommendations on strategies to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.
The short term thinking inherent in the democratic process needs to be overcome. A county commission would remove politics from the long range decisions that we need to be making. The planet is still going to drive into a brick wall. The future will still be scary and unpredictable. But, even if we can’t convince the planet to step on the brakes, then the least Kaua‘i can do is put on a seatbelt.
Luke Evslin
Kapahi
Kaua‘i needs a guardian
Kaua‘i needs a guardian. She is in a dangerous situation that needs someone to look out for her best interest and to protect her. She is a living thing and is being exploited. In light of articles published regarding the proposed Kealia development, plans for Kilauea and the PLDC development of state lands, along with the mess at Po‘ipu, I’ve come to the conclusion that an island guardian is necessary. Ni‘ihau has one — even if you don’t agree. The Robinsons have kept the island from being ruined by developers.
People come to Kaua‘i for its untouched beauty and not its potential for becoming the next O‘ahu. Maybe the County of Kaua‘i should become a national park and then come under the protection of the National Parks Service. Hanalei is the next debacle. More of the same.
There should be a moratorium on any building in Kaua‘i until the Coco Palms is gone, torn down, made into a park, or rebuilt, whatever, but gone as it exists.
David Cooper
West Des Moines, Iowa
