A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 19 , 2019
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR[email protected]LOCAL OPINIONSG
LOBAL WARMING is already here, striking
substantial regions of the United States with
increasing severity. That is the upshot of an
exhaustive Post investigation in which Ste-
ven Mufson, Chris Mooney, Juliet Eilperin and John
Muyskens analyzed decades of local temperature
records and identified a variety of hot spots where
warming has proceeded more quickly.
“A Washington Post analysis of more than a
century of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-
ministration temperature data across the Lower
48 states and 3,107 counties has found that major
areas are nearing or have already crossed the
2-degree Celsius mark,” The Post found. An increase
of 2 degrees Celsius — 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit — is a
temperature threshold that scientists warn the
world, on average, should not surpass. “Today, more
than 1 in 10 Americans — 34 million people — are
living in rapidly heating regions, including New
York City and Los Angeles. Seventy-one counties
have already hit the 2-degree Celsius mark.”
Surpassing 2 degrees locally means differentthings in different places. If the average world
temperature were to breach the 2-degree threshold,
that would mean some places would have warmed
far more than 2 degrees, bringing massive changes,
and some places less. But in many of the regions The
Post examined, substantial negative effects were
clear. Global warming’s consequences are various,
pervasive and not always obvious when people
consider how their lives will be directly affected —
until they are.
The lobster catch around Rhode Island’s Narra-
gansett Bay is down 75 percent because of warmer
waters. Toxic algae blooms are making a New Jersey
lake off-limits to swimmers and boaters. The lake
does not freeze like it used to, deterring ice fisher-
men. Spurred by warmer temperatures, southern
pine beetles are invading northern forests. The
restless ocean is washing beach homes out to sea.
People who now find that their homes and business-
es are far closer to the shore than when they bought
them are moving them farther back — but fear they
will have to move again.Scientists offer various reasons for the tempera-
ture hot spots that have emerged across the United
States. Alaska’s breakneck heating aligns with their
prediction that human greenhouse-gas-driven
warming strikes higher latitudes particularly hard.
In the Northeast, a shifting Gulf Stream — a massive
flow of water that runs from the Gulf of Mexico, up
the Atlantic coast of the United States and then
toward Europe, its path influenced by melting Arctic
ice — seems to explain some of the temperature
anomalies. The underlying cause, though, is human-
caused global warming.
The warming will continue. Humanity has steadi-
ly shifted the chemistry of the atmosphere, in ways
that could not be reversed quickly even if rational
policy were being implemented. The carbon dioxide
that emerges from smokestacks and tailpipes lingers
in the air for decades. All the more reason to change
behavior now. Yet, whether for political advantage or
out of sheer pigheadedness or both, President
Trump continues to deny and ignore reality. It is
beyond unforgivable.Global warming is already here
A Post investigation shows how climate change is affecting the United States.
In his Aug. 11 Local Opinions essay, “A tool that
helps speed up gentrification,” Diego Zuluaga of the
Cato Institute asserted that the Community Reinvest-
ment Act, a law designed to combat redlining, is
instead promoting displacement of minorities in
gentrifying communities in the District.
A report published this year by the National Com-
munity Reinvestment Coalition revealed the intensity
of gentrification and displacement in the District. But
it also showed gentrification and displacement are
rare nationally and are concentrated in just a handful
of metropolises. In most of the nation, the CRA cat-
egorically did not cause displacement.
Many studies have concluded that the CRA has a
significant positive impact on lending to minority
and low- and moderate-income borrowers. Federal
Reserve Bank of Philadelphia economists showedthat the CRA has increased home lending to minori-
ties in low-income and minority (LMI) communities.
CRA examiners are instructed not to count lending or
investing when it displaces lower-income people.
The real problems are rampant economic inequality
and a lack of affordable homeowner units. As of this
writing, according to Zillow, there were just 240 homes
with two or more bedrooms for sale under $500,000 in
the District. That’s the problem: Homes aren’t afford-
able to LMI people. The CRA helps by encouraging
banks to finance construction of new or rehabilitated
units that are affordable to LMI households, but the
scale of construction is not large enough to show up in
the data Zuluaga is observing.
Jesse Van Tol, Washington
The writer is chief executive of the
National Community Reinvestment Coalition.What really drives gentrification in the District
ABCDE
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
R
ESIDENTS OF the District of Columbia
deserve protection from the most violent
criminals and to be confident those offend-
ers receive prison sentences commensurate
with the gravity of their crimes. A bill pending in the
D.C. Council would undermine that expectation and
subject residents to unwarranted risks from convict-
ed murderers, rapists and child sex abusers.
The legislation would directly benefit the most
serious and violent criminals — specifically, those
who killed, raped or committed sexual abuse before
reaching age 25 — by making them eligible for
release, or a reduced sentence, while still in their 30s.
It’s important to be clear about the implication of
the pending legislation, sponsored by D.C. Council
member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6): Under the bill, if
the gunmen who massacred innocent people in
El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, this month had instead
committed their crimes in the District — and had
both survived — one would be eligible for release or
reduced sentence at age 36, at a judge’s discretion;
the other at age 39.
In addition, a measure enacted earlier this year bythe council and signed by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser
(D) eliminated a requirement that judges consider
the circumstances of the crime when an offender asks
for a shorter sentence. So if a judge focused on the
brutality of a murder in denying a petition, he or she
might receive a personal reprimand from Mr. Allen —
who did just that earlier this summer, in the case of a
convicted child rapist whose request for a reduced
sentence was denied by a Superior Court judge.
That’s insupportable, and in fact, it’s highly doubt-
ful that most citizens of the District would support
such a measure.
A recently enacted bill allows convicts who of-
fended at age 16 or 17 to file such sentence-reduction
requests after serving just 15 years behind bars,
down from 20 years, even if they are not yet eligible
for parole. Pending legislation would expand the
potential beneficiaries to include offenders who
committed violent crimes up to age 25. If it passes,
they would be eligible for a reduced sentence before
they hit age 40. And Mr. Allen’s intent is that they be
assessed mainly on their conduct in prison and —
this is squishier — the extent of their sincererehabilitation.
The bill’s advocates, including D.C. Attorney Gen-
eral Karl A. Racine, cite neuroscience in contending
that youthful offenders — impetuous, peer-
pressured and oblivious to consequences — cannot
fairly be held accountable for their crimes years later
when they are mature. But the ostensible scientific
evidence is window dressing for the proponents’ real
goal, which is more generally to limit incarceration
even for the most serious crimes.
It’s fair to debate sentencing reform: Several
Scandinavian countries, among others, have rela-
tively short prison terms for murderers and other
violent felons. But the District’s politicians should be
clear about their agenda. If they want to slash
sentences for violent offenders — many or most of
whom are in their 20s — let them make that case
clearly and honestly. But by having judges hand
down decades-long sentences, and then allowing
even the most brutal convicts to seek release before
they reach age 40, lawmakers are doing something
different. They’re deceiving the public and fooling
victims.Imagine mass shooters out of jail early
Compassion is important, but D.C. must still punish the most horrible crimes effectively.
W
HEN “MAD MEN’S” Betty Draper puffed
on a cigarette while pregnant, modern
audiences cringed. Public awareness of
smoking’s toll on people’s lungs and on
their children has come far since the 1960s. But lung
cancer and birth defects are only a couple of the
severe health problems associated with tobacco use.
New warning labels the Food and Drug Administra-
tion rolled out last Thursday aim to make other
potential health consequences better known — with
large, graphic depictions of what else long-term
smokers should expect from their habit.
One of the new labels shows a man with a heart
surgery scar running up his chest, warning that
smoking clogs arteries and causes heart disease and
strokes. Another depicts diseased feet with amputat-
ed toes, warning that smoking reduces blood flow to
the limbs and can lead to amputations. Yet another
shows a vial of bloody urine, warning that smoking
causes bladder cancer. The labels would have to take
up at least the top half of cigarette packages and at
least the top 20 percent of tobacco advertisements.
These would be far more forceful than the tiny,
text-only warnings carried on tobacco products
now, which have changed little since “Mad Men”
days. Acting FDA commissioner Norman “Ned”
Sharpless told reporters on a Thursday conference
call that the administration’s research shows the
public is “surprisingly unaware of many of the risks
of smoking.” FDA tobacco chief Mitch Zeller also
said the old surgeon general’s warnings “have
become virtually invisible.” Indeed, other countries
have surpassed the United States in the severity and
graphic nature of the warnings they require on
tobacco packaging.
Extensive FDA consumer research found that the
information on the proposed warning labels was
new to smokers and nonsmokers alike. The experi-
ences of other nations suggest that large, graphic
warning labels help deter smoking and discouragetobacco users from smoking around others. The
images on the FDA’s new labels would quickly
convey to English and non-English speakers alike
the real-world effects of their habit.
New warnings are a long time coming. The
2009 Tobacco Control Act required them. But the
FDA’s first attempt got mired in litigation. Now the
FDA is trying again with new warning labels backed
by substantial new consumer research. By tying
these labels’ content closely to its mission of
educating the public about the various harms oftobacco use, the FDA should prevail in any further
court challenges, in light of jurisprudence that
allows the government to require disclosures on
products and in advertising.
For the decade since it passed, the Tobacco
Control Act has promised to be a game-changing
policy tool in the fight against the nation’s leading
cause of preventable death. Realizing that promise
has encountered delays, on cigarette labeling as in
other areas. The sooner these new labels are on
tobacco packages, the better.Yes, make the
labels larger
A decade after the
Tobacco Control Act, we’re still
fighting about alerting the public.ABCDE
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The Washington Post
1301 K St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071 (202) 334-Kudos to Courtland Milloy and many others
sounding the alarm on climate change [“Climate
change demands leadership — it can’t wait,” Metro,
Aug. 14]. The hidden problem with climate change is
that it doesn’t proceed at a constant pace; instead, it
is accelerating because of numerous positive feed-
back loops. One simple example: When white arctic
ice, which reflects most sunlight back into space,
melts and exposes brown earth, that earth absorbs
sunlight and melts the ice even faster — which
exposes more earth, which melts still more ice. That
feedback loop spirals faster and faster.
We are very close to a tipping point at which
man-made climate change is happening so fast that
there will no longer be anything we can do to stop
that runaway train. If we haven’t already hit that
tipping point, it is frighteningly close — a half-dozen
years or so.
Take a look at the May/June issue of the MIT
Technology Review for a hard-nosed look at the
reality of climate change. We’re either going to act
right now, with everything we’ve got, or human life is
finished on this planet. To quote from that issue:
“And the strong possibility that our great-
grandchildren may be the last generation of humans
ever to live on planet Earth.” We’re in big trouble, and
it’s worsening rapidly, but our politicians think
campaign contributions from big business are more
important.
George Wedberg, RockvilleOur tomorrows may be running out
Regarding the Aug. 12 news article “Me Too
movement is overshadowed in 2020 campaign”:
Since #MeToo went viral almost two years ago,
we’ve had the most significant cultural conversation
about addressing the problem of sexual harassment
in a generation. In the past year, thousands of
workers walked out of Google and McDonald’s to
protest the lack of employer action to confront
sexual harassment. And a majority of voters now
consider sexual harassment in the workplace a
priority issue to be addressed. A June poll commis-
sioned by the National Women’s Law Center shows a
full two-thirds of voters across parties and sex want
lawmakers to change the law to better address and
prevent sexual harassment on the job. There is
strong bipartisan consensus among voters that all
people, no matter where they work, should be
protected from sexual harassment and be able to
work with safety, equity and dignity.
What’s lacking is candidates being asked about
this issue, not voters’ interest in it. No Democratic
primary debate to date has included a question
about sexual harassment. In upcoming debates,
moderators must ask candidates what they have
done to address sexual harassment and what they’ll
do to make sure that work is safe and fair for all
workers. Voters deserve to get the information they
need on a topic they care about.
Fatima Goss Graves, Washington
The writer is president and chief executive of the
National Women’s Law Center.Speak up on sexual harrassment
I was disheartened by the quote from Ken
Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services, in the Aug. 15 editorial “Don’t
give us your poor,” suggesting that the United States
wants only those who can pull themselves “up by
their bootstraps.” More than 50 years ago, a man said
to me, “Those people need to pull themselves up by
their bootstraps.” Then, of course, he was speaking of
black people, and my response was, “But what if they
don’t have any?”
The United States has always been the country
that provided those bootstraps both to all who lived
here and those who arrived on our shores seeking
asylum. That promise has been taken away by an
administration driven by hatred and fear. It is a
promise that must be restored if we are to keep our
country’s very soul intact.
Leni Preston, BethesdaThe Trump administration’s new policy of
denying people entry into the United States based on
their likely need for public assistance will enhance
fear in communities that are already very much on
edge. It will encourage mass disenrollment from
much-needed public-benefit programs and potential-
ly discourage families from seeking out health care.
As a health-care provider, I am seeing this happen
in front of my eyes. I think of one of my patients, a
child with a complex medical history, who came in
very sick after being released from a detention
center without adequate medications. This family,
and likely many others, will not seek public resourc-
es to obtain much-needed nutritional supplements
and possibly not come to future health-care appoint-
ments for fear that their asylum claim will be
rejected.
This child is our future, and, as a part of the
public, I am willing to be charged to help ensure this
child and many others can receive the nutrition and
support needed to have a healthy one.
Jessica Chamish, WashingtonA promise worth keeping
In her Aug. 13 Sports column, “USOPC has no
standing when its athletes kneel,” Sally Jenkins
continued to enlighten her readers and expose the
U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee for its inad-
equate response to abuse of its athletes. While the
USOPC has the audacity to consider sanctioning two
Olympic athletes, Race Imboden and Gwen Berry,
for taking a knee and raising a fist, respectively, on
the medal podium, Ms. Jenkins called out the
USOPC for its slow, obstructive and unconscionable
response to the child molestation allegations
brought against Larry Nassar.
Although athletes are not supposed to participate
in political demonstrations during the games, the
USOPC was supposed to support and keep our
Olympic athletes safe. It failed miserably and contin-
ues to fail by lying, allegedly destroying evidence,
obstructing justice and failing to clean up the
organization. Kudos to Ms. Jenkins for taking a
stand with and for all of our athletes.
Sheri Langford, FairfaxThey failed our athletes
EDITORIALSTOM TOLESLetters can be sent to [email protected].
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telephone numbers.