Get a grip on water usage now
Dr. Clif Cleaveland was right on the money to point out how valuable available fresh water is on Earth (June 30, page E1). Our acceptance of wasteful water usage is out of line for sustainability. We must face facts that 7.3 billion people are wanting to wash bodies, water lawns, manufacture products and eat!
California is currently using large quantities of water, irrigating desert habitat to grow a major portion of America’s food crazy! And we use vast amounts of water to raise meat when we could provide plenty of protein via vegetable sources using far less water.
Our nation should seriously look at watersheds and draw lines around them. Each region should feed its human residents and critters within the boundaries. Granted, this would mean fewer varieties of food available. No fresh lettuce in August in Tennessee, for instance. But when seasonal items are in season in our area, those foods would be special and revered.
We must take a good, hard look at what is transpiring on our unique planet, because we have the power to share resources or make life miserable for many.
Anne Garrard Grindle, Sewanee, Tenn.
Hobby Lobby thanked for ad
I would sincerely like to thank Hobby Lobby for the wonderful advertisement in the Chattanooga Times Free Press on Sunday, July 5. We, as a country, have strayed far from our Judeo-Christian beliefs. Our entire system of government was based on the biblical model and now has been twisted and turned so many different ways it has become as thin as onionskin paper.
More companies and corporations should be able to voice their opinions without fear of economic, or for that matter, governmental reprisal.
Thanks again, Hobby Lobby!
Mark Arnold, Soddy-Daisy
Issue is discrimination, not religious liberty
After the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, I keep reading the same thing over and over: “Protect my religious liberty!”
I guess someone of religion needs to explain this to me: Why is it OK to discriminate against people and declare “religious liberty” as your protection? By that logic, it must be OK to disallow girls from going to school and to treat women as property. It must also be OK for suicide bombers to run into a crowded market place and blow it up.
As long as the perpetrator of the act has a “religious belief” that what they are doing is right, then it must be protected under your misguided notion of religious liberty. I have an alternate theory: This is not religious liberty. This is discrimination. This is bigotry.
Reminder: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
John Landers