The views and opinions expressed in our letters section are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Hudson Valley One. You can submit a letter to the editor here.
Comeau architects
The following, according to Jess Walker’s website, is Walker Associates’ architectural design approach: “While focused on a modern and refined aesthetic, [they strive] to consider the work’s context – to reference its local history, culture and vernacular vocabulary in a contemporary manner. Both the architectural aesthetic and the user experience are enhanced through an understanding of, and respect for, what makes the site and location unique. Their creations attempt to capture the spirit of time and place by using innovative building methods and materials.”
Yet what design did Walker Associates create for the proposed addition in an attempt to complement the potentially historic Comeau Building? Buildings with shed roofs: the same type of roof I put on my firewood shed. From Woodstock’s Commission for Civic Design: “What was/is proposed is an L-shaped, two-part shed-roofed building that does not achieve that goal. The two shed-roof forms [are] so close to the existing Comeau [that] they compete with it.”
Howard Harris
Woodstock
Rental vacancy rate 3.2%
We conducted a study on vacancy rates in rental properties with six (6) or more units here in the Village of New Paltz. Our Village Board is collecting information to better understand the nature and availability of housing supply in our community.
The Village maintains a rental registry and properties are inspected for safety. According to the rental registry in 2021, twenty (20) properties in the Village are complexes consisting of six (6) units or more. These 20 properties represent 756 units with a total of 1,234 bedrooms. Property owners and managers were surveyed to determine how many of the 756 units were occupied on November 15, 2021.
Of these, 732 units were occupied and 24 were vacant. Using methodology established by the Census Bureau, this results in a vacancy rate of 3.2 percent.
In comparison, the Census Bureau’s national rental vacancy rate trended higher from 1998 to 2010 when the rate increased from approximately 8 percent to 11 percent. Since then, the rate’s trend has steadily reversed, falling to 6.4 percent in Q3-20 and then 5.8 percent in Q3-21.
As a general rule of thumb, some market observers consider 5 percent to 8 percent a balanced rate where rents could be increased moderately every year, but not at an amount that puts undue burden on tenants. When vacancy rates drop below 5 percent, the increased demand and reduced supply allows investors to raise rental rates faster. Vacancy rates above 8 percent may indicate a less appealing location or a property in need of significant repairs.
Mayor Tim Rogers
New Paltz
Take out your garbage
Why is it that people who enter the beautiful landscape at Bristol Beach State Park in Saugerties alongside the Hudson River carrying their Gatorade Frost Cool, Propel, three Heinekens, two Twisted Teas, Nestle Pure Life and Splash, two Poland Springs, two Blue Moons and two Milwaukee’s Frost Ice can’t carry their bottles, cans and plastic containers out with them to leave Eve’s Point as pretty as they found it?
Makes one wonder!
Lanny Walter
Saugerties
Community concerns about Trans-Hudson water district extension
The following letter (with additional co-signers) was presented to the Town Board during a public hearing at their 12/2 meeting:
Dear Town Board members,
We, the undersigned New Paltz residents, are writing to express our opposition to the petition before you to expand a water district in order to include the Trans-Hudson site on the corner of Route 299 and North Putt Corners Road. As you know, Town Law § 194(2)(a) directs that if a town board determines it is “not in the public interest” to extend a district as requested, “the town board shall deny the petition.”
With significant community participation and support, in 2019 the Town Board voted unanimously to rezone this area. The new zoning language explicitly endorses a widespread desire to “transition away from auto-oriented strip commercial development and extend the Village’s walkable, mixed-use, ‘Main Street’ character into the Town” [Town of New Paltz Code § 140-22.2 (a)]. Bicycle- and pedestrian-oriented planning is an important component of this vision. Extending water service to enable a car-oriented, sprawl development, indeed one that many have described as a “de facto Thruway rest stop,” is antithetical to these goals.
Because this site plan includes dangerous features that would compromise the safety of the Empire State Trail users — the Route 299 driveway and an in-road bike lane on Route 299 — it actually reduces existing bike-friendliness in this corridor. A plan that undermines public safety cannot be in the public interest. Ensuring the safety of Empire State Trail users should be your paramount concern.
Finally, the current site plan would clear a significant portion of the forested Thruway buffer required by the Town code. The integrity of this buffer matters to New Paltz residents. Left intact, it will more effectively minimize the Thruway’s negative impacts on air quality and noise levels.
Denying this petition will encourage Trans-Hudson to put forward an improved design that matches community desires for this area as reflected in the 2019 zoning amendment. This new plan should prioritize bike and pedestrian safety while preserving the critical Thruway buffer. This board acted with foresight in 2019 when it voted to rezone this area. We urge you to do so again now by protecting the public interest and denying this petition.
Rickie Solinger
James Geiser
Alison Nash
Barbara Petersen
Roger Roloff
Ingrid Haeckel
Jan Stivers
Dan Stivers
Laura deNey
Rosalyn Cherry
Judy Dorney
Dr. Rose Rudnitski
Lee Bell
Krishnamurthi Ravishankar
Wendy Rudder
Judy Mage
Daniel Schniedewind
Andrea Thompson
David Thompson
Don Kerr
Janelle Peotter
Lynne Cherry
Celia Cuomo
Kay Gray
Joel Oppenheimer
Aidan Koehler
New Paltz
COVID Adverse Events (AE) misinformation continues
In his 12/01/21 HV1 letter, Mr. Steve Romine continues to greatly exaggerate the significance of the adverse vaccination VAERS reports submitted since January 1, 2021. He now does so by erroneously comparing the 2620 fetal deaths reported to VAERS in 2021, “after pregnant mothers received a vaccination” with such “usual” fetal deaths reported over the last 30 years.
As I noted in my previous 11/24/21 HV1 letter, he has purposely failed to “factor in” the additional 464,445,580 COVID vaccine doses administered in the US between January1, 2021 and December 2, 2021. This disproportionately large supplemental number of vaccinations needs to be included in any analysis to arrive at a valid historical comparison of average AE “rates per injection” (https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/).
Nevertheless, such exaggerated, negative vaccine propaganda tragically persists, in spite of the ongoing increase in COVID cases and deaths in the US, almost exclusively among those who have NOT been vaccinated. And now new public health threats are emerging with the spread of the new Omicron variant! So, by encouraging HV1 readers to shun the easily and freely available COVID shots, I believe Mr. Romine is performing a serious public disservice!
Finally, in this regard, I would again suggest that Mr. Romine reveal whether has personally avoided receiving COVID vaccinations, as his letters have repeatedly encouraged us to do. Otherwise, perhaps he is engaging in some kind of political or intellectual exercise to undermine the urgent public health efforts of the Biden administration to defeat this deadly virus!
Peter V. Fiorentino
Rosendale
Whatever happened to Christmas carols?
I watched the Saugerties Christmas parade on Sunday, December 5. I enjoyed all the gaily lighted fire trucks. But I also listened to it. Where did the idea come from that ear-splitting sirens are festive? Whatever happened to Christmas carols? These sirens hurt my ears and they are certainly not good for children’s ears.
Arabella Colton
Saugerties
The RittenOUThouse
Look at the event from another point of view. You are in a crowd, it’s dark and rowdy and you see a random guy with an assault rifle. Not a cop. Not anyone in a uniform. Do you assume he’s there to sell cookies?
Let’s get real: Our trigger-happy right-wing extremists got the news they wanted to hear. That they are jubilant perhaps should be concerning to all of us. Rittenhouse, in essence, was the victor of a state-sanctioned duel. This is who we are; the sickness in the skin of the body called America, or “domestic violence” extremism, is now the greatest threat to our homeland. White supremacy and its grievances have become the beating heart for “Rittenhouse vigilantism.” In my humble opinion he’s an obvious villain and an extension of USA rot with its bogus and reactionary notions. This allows for false American gun threats and cheers on violence to metastasize.
The great and recent rise of white nationalism has affected white identity extremism to the point of it no longer just being red meat or lip service; it is the real deal now, a chilling reality in which vigilantism is given tacit approval from people at the top of American political life – people like Donald Trump and his twisted new Republican Party. They do it with a wide smile on their face. He is now the bigger-than-life poster boy for the NRA, too.
Yes, they’ve all greenlit this extremism. Better to serve in a Wild West milieu with a vigilante mentality than to represent true equality, fair justice and a civilized society for all its people. Between this, conservative politicians passing laws criminalizing peaceful protests and liberal politicians standing aside and saying nothing about it tells me we’re entering a frightening time. Greater efforts need to be made to consolidate and build local communities for people who want to fight for the rights of the marginalized without the target practice by deplorable vigilante gun-toting types.
Really, this is a story of a nation armed to the teeth. It’s the story of, in the words of the black sociologist W. E. B. DuBois, a “double system of justice, which erred on the white side by undue leniency and the practical immunity of red-handed criminals.”
Neil Jarmel
West Hurley
Seeing double
It’s difficult to have two lovers at once, unless they’re twins.
Sparrow
Phoenicia
False assumptions
Peter Fiorentino makes several false assumptions in his 11/24/21 letter. One is that I made calculations regarding reported adverse events (“AEs”) from the mRNA vaccine in my 11/10/21 letter. I made no such claim, but paraphrased from a peer-reviewed study by Dr. Jessica Rose, who has a BSc in Applied Mathematics, MSc in Immunology at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, PhD in Computational Biology at Bar Ilan University and Post-Doctorate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Molecular Biology, and is a respected viral immunologist (https://web.archive.org/web/20211002192421, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8483988). The study in part juxtaposes the mRNA vaccine’s projected versus actual volume of AEs reported to VAERS as follows: “Results:…the stark contrast between what the count would be if the trend of past 30 years continued through to the end of 2021: 65,000 for the entire 2021 year as opposed to 400,000 over six months.”
I suggest Peter take up his miscalculation theory with scientifically capable Dr. Rose, and refrain from his arrogant ad-hominem antics.
More importantly, the assumption of biological safety is questionable, considering the FDA knew in advance the mRNA vaccine could have 20 serious potential AEs, including “death” (www.fda.gov/media/143557/download)(slide16), now showing up in VAERS reports. Apparently, Peter has turned a blind eye to these FDA admissions revealed in my letter.
Regarding the assumption of “trust in the expertise of Dr. Fauci,” I recommend the HV1 readership purchase the newly released comprehensive and thoroughly referenced best-selling book: The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (“RFK Jr.”). The façade of a noble Dr. Fauci is thoroughly exposed as a profit-driven deep-state actor by the expert research capabilities of RFK Jr.’s winning legal team, who exposed Merck and Monsanto in multi-million-dollar lawsuits.
Mr. Fiorentino may be “proud” of being a willing subject in Fauci’s grand experiment, but I am proud of my time-tested, God-given healthy natural immune system and the 99 percent chance it has of beating CV19 without a synthetic untested vaccine. Furthermore, I am not “urging” anybody to do anything other than review solid data and hard facts on the benefits of Ivermectin, and the potential for serious AEs from the mRNA vaccine, so people can make informed decisions specific to their own unique situation. The bottom line here is: “False assumptions lead to false conclusions” and “One size does not fit all.”
Steve Romine
Woodstock
Being treated like a broodmare
Get ready! It’s time for Gilead! Yes, that’s right: Despite 50 years and lots of positive data, it’s time to get girls and women back to their real roles in life: broodmare.
With complete ignorance and blanket generalizations, abortion will soon be murder, and no one will get off on self-defense as a 17-year-old did after killing two men. His penalty could have been life in prison, typical for murder. There is punishment on the way. Astonishingly, punishment for an abortion has yet to be mentioned.
The desire to return to a secure, rosy past seems to be a worthy goal, except that there never was such a time. Until 1973, women were at the mercy of biology, their husbands, doctors, clergy, law enforcement and backstreet butchers. No matter how that baby was conceived, you were having it. Some faiths even counseled for losing the mother for the baby’s life.
Knowing more today, fetal viability does not exist at six weeks or 14 – only at 24 weeks, with help.
If every egg is sacrosanct, how about sperm? Eggs don’t fertilize themselves. What about punishment for the act of impregnation?
Are parents clamoring for better sex education or just criticizing history and civics education?
The “past” you are up against is the Sexual Revolution of the 1970s playing out through today. Good luck shoving that genie back in the bottle.
My prayer is that women rise up in our majority and, like ancient Lysistrata, withhold sex till men come to their senses. For if you don’t wish to be treated like a broodmare, you’d better kick up your heels.
Melanie Demitri Chletcos
Hurley
Dreaming of a White Christmas
I once read an article titled “Chrismukkah” in which a Jewish woman related her love for Christmas and the great contributions Jews have made to the holiday in America. These contributions included not only the favorite songs we love to hear and sing (like “White Christmas,” “Let It Snow” and “The Christmas Song”), but also the Jewish baby boy whose birth is the “reason for the season” and is celebrated December 25 throughout the Christian world.
After sharing the interesting story of Irving Berlin and his wife and the popularity of his song “White Christmas,” the author wrote that the song has “imbedded in the hearts and minds of everyone…a deep longing for snow on Christmas Day.” The article concluded with a hope for “a white Christmas this year with peace on Earth, good will towards each other and blessing for us all.”
This article and the author’s “hope” brought to mind another contribution of the Jewish people: the Hebrew Scriptures. One of the writers found in these, Isaiah, invokes the image of snow and the purity that it symbolizes as the God of Abraham pleads through him to his people, “Come now, let us reason together…though your sins are like scarlet, they will be white as snow.” Perhaps the longing for snow on the day that celebrates the birth of a Jewish boy, Jesus of Nazareth, is indicative of the deeper longing of us all to be purified of our sins. And perhaps the desire for peace on earth at Christmas, expressed by the author, comes from an intuitive knowledge that before men can be reconciled to each other, they must first be reconciled to God, who gave us the Mosaic Laws that were written not only upon stone, but also the human heart. These laws describe the manner in which men and women were intended to relate to God and each other and reveal that every violation of them is a distortion of this intention and, in effect, a distortion of truth.
The “Chrismukkah” author’s final request of “blessings for us all” reminded me that the God of Abraham promised to “bless all nations” through Abraham’s offspring, the Jewish people. And, indeed, Abraham’s descendants – despite often being despised, rejected and persecuted by the people of the world they enriched – have fulfilled God’s promise to Abraham through contributions in the fields of science, medicine, literature and the influence of their Scriptures that form the moral and social foundations of Western civilization.
However, the first-century Jews who proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah believed that his birth was the ultimate fulfillment of this promise of “blessings to all nations.” They proclaimed that through his life, death and resurrection, the God of Abraham provided the means through which even the most scarlet sins are made “white as snow” and all people can be reconciled with God. Moreover, it is this reconciliation with God that makes “peace on Earth, good will” towards each other possible.
For Jesus, the reconciler of God and man, says to all who believe in him: You can be reconciled to one another as you love as I have loved you. And it is the hope of the blessing of forgiveness and reconciliation for all that has inspired the religious songs of joy that celebrate Christmas. Come to think of it, since the first Christians were all Jews, the Jewish people (referred to by the author of “Chrismukkah” as “my people”) are responsible not only for the secular songs of Christmas, but the religious ones as well. With this in view, I hope that the author is still writing in the free world and that all her Christmases will be “white.”
George Civile
Gardiner
When it rains a lot in Woodstock
The lawn has changed in this summer of rain; the field is green and full.
Under the maple it’s now almost all moss, and the rest is going to clover.
With the new plant life, the animals thrive and new ones visit for a while.
We’ve brown thrashers now in the spirea hedge that terrorize the other birds.
The deer have lost all shyness and guile; they know they’re the dominant species.
The fawns this spring fit under the chairs and now they romp around with their mothers.
The greatest surprise is a family of rabbits that definitely like our clover.
I sit in my chair reading a book, as the bunnies munch around me.
Our neighbor, taking her walk down the road, sees and falls to laughing.
Our daughter’s in love with the rabbits; she sparkles when she sees them.
She positions herself painstakingly to photograph them.
They have also become watercolors, linoleum prints and oils, etchings, silkscreens, Provincetown prints and monoprints,
Aquatints, lithographs, woodcuts and elements in landscapes.
And so the rabbits will always be with us, even after the rains stop.
Apparently, rain nurtures art as it does the clover.
Norman Corenthal
Woodstock
SUNY New Paltz voter turnout
The 2020 NSLVE Campus Report found that SUNY New Paltz’s voting increased by 16.4 percent from 2016 to 2020. Our average voting rate was 71 percent in 2020, compared to 55 percent in 2016, making us the number-one SUNY for voter participation. Among 18-to-21-year-olds, it increased by 19 percent and among 22-to-24-year-olds, it increased by 16 percent. This increase in civic participation is worth celebrating, especially as youth voters consistently have the lowest voter turnout.
These numbers reflect students’ awareness of social issues and politics, an understanding of the importance of getting involved and a recognition of the power in our actions. The data indicates that students on our campus care about our community and realize our ability to create change.
However, there are plenty of obstacles that can interfere with us getting out to the polls and voting. Absentee mail-in voting and early voting substantially helped increase voter turnout in 2020. This only reaffirms that we need to rally behind and pass legislation that allows easier access to absentee voting and creates same-day voting.
Ballot Proposals 3 and 4 from this past election would’ve allowed for no-excuse absentee voting and paved the way for same-day voter registration. Unfortunately, these proposals did not pass. Passing Proposals 3 and 4 would’ve helped us maintain our voter status at SUNY New Paltz and could have taken us from a gold to a platinum school. We do a disservice to ourselves and to our community when we stand in the way of voter accessibility. The lack of voter accessibility disproportionately impacts and disenfranchises people of color. Voting is a right we should all be able to exercise with ease and we must fight to make that a reality.
As youth, our voices are often underrepresented in elections. By not voting we are allowing others to speak for us and over us. If we want to see real change, we need to continue to take action ourselves, show up to the polls and vote for it.
Sydney Zayer
New Paltz
The people on the right
The people on the right do not want the federal government to restrict their liberty to decide what is best for their bodies regarding COVID-19 vaccinations.
The people on the right do not want the federal government to restrict their liberty to own assault rifles, even if some are certified mentally ill. (Trump, first year in office.)
Now the people on the right do want the federal government to take away the liberty of women to decide what is best for their bodies.
What is wrong with this picture?
Frank Backus
Highland
Tree equity
The recent article in The New Yorker by James Gardener (“A Willfully Misunderstood Earmark Can Help Reduce Climate Change Deaths”) citing the need for urban tree canopies, “tree equity,” to help prevent heat deaths in city communities and what the Build Back Better Act has included in its $3 billion legislation, is exactly what Kingston and all the cities and towns of the mid-Hudson Valley should be adopting as survival techniques for the climate-change Armageddon we are facing.
Trees are the lungs and the umbrellas of the city. The redlining and unequal tree equity of poor neighborhoods (largely absent of the cooling effects of tree-shading during the summer) that differ in air temperatures from the affluent tree-shaded streets by as much as 20 degrees is directly responsible for heat-stroke deaths and heat-related illness from the summertime UHI (Urban Heat Island) effect of bare concrete and blacktop. Last year, 494 people died in Arizona from heat stroke and Phoenix’s mayor, Kate Gallego, has made “tree equity” a major part of her administration’s goals. In contrast, Kingston’s downtown reconstruction has made the city into another urban desert (just like Phoenix), devoid of tree-shaded streets and barren of life-giving vegetation. Mayor Noble should emulate Kate Gallego’s progressive agenda and make Kingston green.
The House has earmarked $3 billion to expand and protect urban tree canopies in the poorest neighborhoods where 30 percent or more of the residents live below the poverty line. Critics of Biden’s Build Back Better Act, which includes these funds to make inner cities more habitable, never had to suffer the symptoms of heat sickness, nausea or breathing difficulty. They should walk a mile in the moccasins of the urban poor on hot city streets before making any rash judgments decrying this lifesaving legislation.
Plant trees to save lives!
Victor C. Capelli
Town of Ulster
Comments about New Paltz
To whom it may concern – and it should concern everybody who lives in New Paltz: The adding of a retail space with a tire store, offices and fast food on Putt Corners is a very bad idea. The traffic here is already horrible, but having our police, Fire Department and emergency responders all on this road is a potential recipe for disaster, especially if circumstances arrive where a quick response is needed anywhere north of Route 299! I am very surprised that the heads of these important departments have not weighed in on the obvious: The increased potential of delayed responding times to emergencies when there are calls north of 299. Can anyone deny that this location has the serious potential of impacting response times? Imagine a busy day at our proposed new mall, with cars going in and out (some going down to DuBois because cars are backed up past Freihofer’s), trucks delivering and lots of tourist traffic. Imagine a major issue on the Thruway or an emergency at the high school or even the middle school or SUNY!
Contrary to business freedom advocates, this location is the problem, not having business development in New Paltz.
We should not grant variances to support this unneeded development that is opposed by most. Why can’t we have a survey on our Town website where people could vote (Survey Monkey)?
And by the way, New Paltz Village, please stop approving changes that do not fit our Town and look ridiculous (i.e., the mishmosh that is 215 Main Street that looks like architectural puke and that hideous multi-story gray-and-black slab of ugh on 299 and Main).
Lastly, the local SUNY New Paltz Police rarely leave campus except to ticket on Route 32 or get takeout. Meanwhile, our police have to handle all the drunken students, drug dealers, fights, assaults, thefts, public lewdness et cetera, because, apparently, the SUNY Police Union contract agreement prohibits their involvement or helping our police patrol our town. They outnumber our Town Police, for crying out loud! Our New York State politicians have to negotiate better and get a contract with the SUNY Police Union that supports town/gown towns. Most other town/gown SUNYs have their budgets impacted and have larger police departments like we do.
Also, our Town/Village employees have to clean up after these kids, respond to fires, overdoses, altercations, hospital transport et cetera, all with minimal donations or support from SUNY. Other SUNY towns must also have this burden and lack of adequate financial and personnel assistance. This has to change! Ugh!
Okay, I feel better… but not better.
Ron Stonitsch
New Paltz
Jarmel’s jaded gems
Neil obviously views issues through his own prism without regard to any alternative story line possibilities. He goes on and on about irrelevant side-show elements of the trial that have nothing to do with the jury’s clear obligation to carefully listen to the evidence, watch video evidence, observe facts being presented and listen to witnesses.
He didn’t get the outlandish verdict that he expected, so now he refers to our judicial system as “the white justice system.” Let’s remind Neil of the recent Ahmaud Arbery trial and ask him how come those three white thugs weren’t also rendered a verdict in accordance with his “white justice system?” The verdict in the Arbery case was just as appropriate as the Rittenhouse verdict. Both cases were decided by juries who did their jobs excellently as they mirrored each other in weighing all the evidence and coming to proper conclusions. As Neil condemns the Rittenhouse jury verdict, it’s safe to assume he praised the Arbery jury verdict. This would put Neil’s double standard and hypocrisy on full display for all of us.
It’s easy to see that Neil has been lured into the same mob mentality that engendered all the ruin and destruction in the “love summer” of 2020 in Seattle, Portland and other cities, by the cliched “peaceful protesters”, before they ever saw a shred of any evidence and facts from investigations that had not even begun, yet. Also guilty of the same mob mentality were our feckless President, Vice President and many of the faux journalists from the bowels of CNN and MSNBC. They all took turns last year calling Rittenhouse a “white supremacist,” “vigilante”, etc. before any real evidence and facts were available to anyone. After the verdict, VP Harris said “it’s clear there’s more work to do after Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty.” Pathetically, she’s supposed to be a lawyer and seems to be confused as to what basic self defense standards are. And, Biden’s hypocritical 180, after saying the jury system worked, to suddenly saying, “I’m angry over the Rittenhouse verdict.” It’s obvious that their comments were clearly pandering to the mobs and their mentality.
So, Neil is totally lost on how to explain that one jury got it right while the other got it wrong, even though both juries were mirror images of each other in performing their duties honestly and conscientiously.
John N. Butz
Modena
Science! Who needs science?
Ask a chemist a physics question and you’ll get a shrug if she is honest and BS if she isn’t. Worse still is when anyone believes that we live in a world with “settled science.” The value of science is curiosity, not certainty. The joy of science is discovery; the hard work of science is digging deeper, seeking causation, seeking a better and more useful set of facts. A hundred years from now I believe we will be seen as superstitious in our beliefs about science!
In 1970, I fell for the ‘Al Gorism’ of that dawn of the modern era following men walking on the moon: ZPG, which stood for zero population growth. With scientific certainty we were told that to have more than two kids was unethical; the Earth could not support more people. Starvation, mass human annihilation by disease, the whole menu of existential hooey we are being told by John Kerry and his band of merry pranksters about climate change. India and China are depending on abundant coal and will be for decades — combined their population is more than nine times ours.
Oh, and that ski chalet you have rented for your winter family vacation? Leave the heat on at home or your pipes will freeze and burst.
Paul Nathe
New Paltz
Join the family! 
