Mon 21 Nov 2016
Letter #621
(2nd letter today)
Wm Morris, Wandle 1884
Dear President Obama,
You have 8 weeks left in your Presidency and frankly nothing to lose. So why not sign 5 executive orders a day, 25-30 a week on all things you hold dear? Releasing prisoners who have served 3 years or more for drug possession, stopping un-needed dirty pipelines, preserving land and oceans in reserves and monuments, assuring voting rights are not trampled, all sort of good things! So, many could be reversed, but it will take a while, and doing it shows your values!
Like this wonderful wallpaper with its red striped ribbon coursing through an intricate landscape, hundreds of executive orders on climate change and social justice would shout to the world your deepest concerns and would constitute a legacy so startling, so brave, so humane and caring that none will forget it. Faced with a prospect of hate, you can choose LOVE – for people and planet. What a marvelous legacy! Be bold. Pick up the pen. We’ve got your back. Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Love Executive Orders!
Thurs 24 Nov 2016
Letter #622
Dear President Obama,
I shouldn’t have to worry about monarch butterfly habitat and deforestation in Mexico when I eat guacamole! But now I do! https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/world/americas/ambition-of-avocado-imperils-monarch-butterflies-winter-home.html
Americans ate twice as many avocados (by weight) in 2015 than in 2008, and 80% of them came from Mexico. This insane increase in avocado consumption happened because they became “cheap”. But they’re not cheap if you count the environmental degradation, and they are not sustainable in the forests of Michoacan because they use much more water than the pines and oaks being replaced. Once again, capitalism run-amok gives Americans a short-term benefit of “cheap” avocados at the cost of great long term environmental damage. This is yet another example of why corporations MUST not be able to sue governments for loss of profit. We need stronger protections for water and ecosystems – everywhere! With climate change advancing RAPIDLY, we need much more re-forestation to trap some of the carbon we emit. Let’s KIITG, keep it in the ground, reforest and protect water. That’s what we need to do NOW. Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, No More Avocados for me
Tues 29 Nov 2016
Letter #623
Place de la Republique, Paris
Dear President Obama,
This is one of my favorite pictures from the Paris Climate Talks a year ago. The big climate march was cancelled as too risky – after over 100 people were killed in terrorist attacks a few weeks before. So the Parisians lined up 11,000 pairs of shoes, neatly in rows, including shoes from Pope Francis and UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/30/us/politics/paris-climate-talks.html
The huge silent testimonial made a powerful statement for peace, for unity of all people on the planet. I love the fact that you can’t tell the nationality or race or religion of someone from shoes! We all wear them and we all face the devastations of climate disruption. We need to pull together and work quickly to cut carbon emissions. Please do everything you can in these last few weeks to help us preserve the climate. Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, The Power of Shoes
Thurs 1 Dec 2016
Letter #624
Wm Morris, Lodden 1884
Dear President Obama,
Jimmy Carter is RIGHT. The US must absolutely recognize Palestine. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/28/opinion/jimmy-carter-america-must-recognize-palestine.html
Please do it NOW, before the end your term. A two-state solution is the only just solution and is long overdue.
To inspire you, I send you a beautiful, harmonious floral wallpaper design by William Morris. Notice the balance and symmetry filling the space left and right. Each bloom mirrored in the opposite side. This is how Israel and Palestine could be. Each with rights and dignity living next to the other. Please recognize Palestine. Less conflict there would help reduce carbon pollution and get people back on their feet. Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Peaceful Co-existence
Tues 13 Dec 2016
Letter #625
Dear President Obama,
I write to you about the Syrian war and how it will end; and, in particular, I highly recommend you take the advice of Peter Galbraith and do something to protect Kurds and others in Northeast Syria. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/opinion/how-the-war-ends-in-syria.html
Peter knows more about that part of the world than perhaps anyone else and knows many Kurdish leaders. The Kurds are far more secular and supportive of gender equality than anyone else in the area, including Turkey. It is disgraceful that Assad has triumphed, but let us hope and ACT so that the least possible harm is done. As the world reels from the assaults of climate chaos, limiting the human tragedy and suffering is imperative. How many more wars, how many more deaths in the region will we see? And remember, the long term solution to all of this is to KIITG! Keep it in the Ground. Please do everything you can. Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Respect Peter Galbraith
14 December, 2016
Letter #626
Dear President Obama,
I write to thank you for preserving the senate intelligence committee 6,700 page report on torture under the presidential records act. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/opinion/the-torture-report-must-be-saved.html
The report will remain classified for at least 12 years, but I am thankful that it will not be destroyed. We need to be able to confront this grim part of our history when we have the strength and stomach to do so. The thought that many in our government would prefer that this report just disappear is chilling and ignominious. What are we becoming?
Who knows what the world will be like in 12 years when the report may be opened. Will we have caused so much climate damage that multiple countries will be embroiled in wars – wars for dwindling resources? Will we be so overwhelmed with 1 or 2 million Bangladeshis pouring into India fleeing flooding? Or will it be 10 million? Please do as many things as you can in these next weeks to help slow down carbon emissions and limit climate chaos. I fear we will be too busy to look at the torture report when it resurfaces. Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Keep the Torture Report
14 December, 2016
Letter #627
Dear President Obama,
It is December and I am writing checks to my favorite charities. One of these is the Ravenswood Education Foundation that supports a poor K-8 school district right next to the wealthy K-8 district where my kids went to school. Today, as I wrote my check to REF, I also wrote a letter to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative because Facebook is about a mile from this poor school district and CZI, funded with Facebook stock, could really make a difference. I enclose my letter here to Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg because I want you to know you are not the only one I ask to do things! And maybe you would like to donate to them as well.
Not only is K-8 education transformative, but these kids will need every help they can get because they are going to be hit hardest by climate change. They are poor and live on land-fill and have little time to advocate for themselves.
So please do everything you can to KIITG! Keep it in the Ground. Slowing carbon pollution gives these kids and more people everywhere a chance at surviving and adapting. Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Ravenswood Education Foundation Donor
Dear Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg,
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative,
I am a regular donor to the Ravenswood Educational Foundation, which tries to help a small, poor, immigrant K-8 school district that many Facebook employees drive right by on their way to and from work in Menlo Park. I raised my kids in Menlo Park where they attended excellent public schools and went on to graduate from first-rate east-coast colleges. This outcome is the norm for kids who go K-8 in the Menlo Park school district, and highly exceptional for the kids from Ravenswood, though they all go to the same high school. K through 8 education is life-transforming.
It is so unfair that these kids who live so close by are so poorly educated, that by the time they hit high school they cannot take the same classes, because of what they haven’t learned.
I have given to the Ravenswood Educational Foundation since 2009 and will continue to do so, although I moved to Cambridge MA in 2013. I was happy to see your name this year in the list of donors in their 10 year report, and I congratulate you on your goal: “to advance human potential and promote equality.” I also noticed that REF funding doubled in 2014 (and has stayed at the higher level) and this is perhaps due to your generosity.
But I write to ask you to consider doing even MORE. Hiring and retaining excellent teachers is the norm in the Menlo Park schools, and the exception at Ravenswood, largely because of the funding and resources gap.
If you could increase your support to REF by $1 or $2 million per year, and pledge to continue that support for at least 10 years, then a whole generation of Ravenswood students could get to high school better prepared. As your daughter grows up, these kids would have access to the same excellence of resources that their neighbors do. They could truly develop their potential! When she goes to high school you can tell her about the changes you made. What a great family story that will be.
Please consider doing this for the kids who live near Facebook. Ravenswood Educational Foundation could do a lot with a relatively small pledge from you. Thank you so much. May your holidays be filled with joy and hope for the future….
15 December, 2016
Letter #628
Dear President Obama,
I write to you today about dead pistachio trees in Kerman Province in Iran.
Water shortages and mismanagement (too cheap water) have transformed the once verdant groves to dusty plains as rivers dry up and groundwater is depleted. Soheil Sharif figures his drip irrigation and huge pump have bought him another 15 years of production. But after that “this place, like everything else here, is done for.” A former agriculture minister warns that “half of Iran’s provinces could become uninhabitable within 15 years, displacing millions of people. Isn’t that how the Syrian war started? Drought? I give Mr. Sharif less than 15 years – because of social upheaval, wars, climate migrants. The world is changing and we need to change with it! We need to put a real price on water, on carbon, on those wonderful pistachio nuts in their clickety-clackety shells – so fun to run your hand through a bowl of them! The faster we can slow down carbon pollution, the faster we can slow down desertification – let’s get on it! Do everything you can to KIITG. Keep it in the Ground! Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Love Pistachio Nuts
15 December, 2016
Letter #629
(2md letter today)
Dear President Obama,
I send you today a moving image of WWI memorials from this past summer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/world/europe/battle-of-the-somme.html
The wreaths were laid to honor 70,000 British soldiers – just a fraction of the dead from the 5-month Battle of the Somme in 1916. Britons observed 2 minutes of silence and I hope these ceremonies remind us of the pointless slaughter of wars. But the peaceful, well-tended lawns, the dignified ceremonies say more about PROSPERITY than peace. Europe and the US are prosperous and the wars have moved elsewhere – the wars European and American weapons abet – to the benefit of our economies. As Aleppo suffers relentless shelling, and no cease-fire manages to hold, how many of us know that 50,000 have been killed in just Aleppo, 500,000 in Syria! https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/world/middleeast/aleppo-syria-evacuation-deal.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/world/middleeast/aleppo-destruction-drone-video.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/14/world/middleeast/kimmelman-images-of-aleppo.html
Who will honor them? And how many more Aleppos will there be in the next 30 years? And how much will Europe be torn apart from endless waves of immigrants: war refugees, climate refugees? Where will the prosperity be for ceremonies? For measured reflection on how far we have come?
The best way we can honor the Syrian war victims is to recognize that climate change is bigger than all of us and to really push for rapid reductions in carbon pollution world-wide. Please do everything you can today to help cut carbon. We really need to KIITG – Keep it in the Ground! Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Honoring Aleppo Victims
16 December, 2016
Letter #630
Dear President Obama,
I was so happy to read today that the mining lease for Twin Metals to build a copper and nickel mine near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota has NOT been renewed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/us/boundary-waters-minnesota-mining.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/travel/boundary-waters-minnesota-canada-into-the-wild.html
They have held this lease since 1966 and have not needed to use it. So it is clear that in an ever more tourist-driven economy, the value of this land as pristine open space far outweighs its mining potential. Thank you for making the right decision. It will protect not only the national forest land, but the water of many many lakes and watersheds from contamination. We are coming to understand that clean water is a very valuable resource. Thank you for protecting it in Minnesota. Long ago we thought we could just extract whatever we wanted, however we wanted from the earth and oceans and there would be no damage, no consequences. But we have since learned that this extractive economy is unsustainable! We need to think more carefully about how to extract, with minimum damage, the products we absolutely need – and leave the others lie. We must KIITG! Keep it in the ground. Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Hooray for Boundary Waters
