Trump’s Threat to Cut Aid to California as It Burns

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/opinion/letters/wildfires-california.html

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To the Editor:

In an Aug. 1 article about wildfires in Siberia, you wrote that “President Trump called Mr. Putin to offer American help in battling the infernos.”

Meanwhile, when California battled wildfires in 2018 and again this year, Mr. Trump threatens to cut federal aid for assisting California. I guess we know where Mr. Trump’s loyalties lie.

Mr. Trump says his threats to cut off wildfire aid to California are because our state has done a “terrible job of forest management.” Maybe nobody told him that 57 percent of forested land in California is federally owned and managed, and only about 3 percent is state or locally owned.

More likely, he has been told that but chooses to ignore it, just as he ignores and denies climate change and its impact on fires. Mr. Trump’s willful ignorance is mind-boggling.

Liz HorowitzBerkeley, Calif.

To the Editor:

In “Climate Change’s Unknown Costs” (Op-Ed, Oct. 25), two prominent scholars, Naomi Oreskes and Nicholas Stern, suggest that it is failures of economic analysis that have caused insufficient action by world leaders. This is giving entirely too much credit to the influence of economists.

But the blame for inaction is indeed linked with economic realities.

First, climate change is a global problem. Hence, it is in the self-interest of most jurisdictions to free-ride on the actions of others.

Second, because greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, the most severe consequences of climate change will be in the future, but climate change policies and attendant mitigation costs need to be up front, presenting the politically challenging combination of upfront costs and delayed benefits.

Third, the economic benefits of climate change policies will, in general, be more diffuse than the cost impacts, presenting another challenge in representative democracies.

Moreover, the specific deficiencies Professors Oreskes and Stern claim infect economic analyses ignore the highly influential work on catastrophic impacts by my colleague Martin Weitzman, as well as fundamental analyses by the Nobel laureate William Nordhaus.

Robert N. StavinsCambridge, Mass.The writer is a professor of environmental economics at Harvard.

To the Editor:

Re “Shoppers Click, and City Chokes on Convenience” (front page, Oct. 27):

During business hours on weekdays, traffic on Madison Avenue from 60th Street north to about 86th Street is often reduced to one lane because of delivery trucks double parked on both sides of the avenue. This results in walking actually being faster than moving by bus, car, truck or other vehicle.

A partial solution to the problem would be to permit trucks making deliveries to double park on only one side: let’s say only the left side. A prohibitive fine of perhaps $1,000 should be imposed for double parking on the right side. To ensure effective enforcement, one or more parking violation officers should be assigned to continuous patrol.

Stephen R. LangenthalNew York