Jackie Bueno Sosa The Miami Herald

December 9, 2009

Jackie Bueno Sosa
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: It’s time for you to step up to the plate – Some comments on our failures to strike a blow for drowning polar bears even if they eat those cute baby seals. Thank you for pointing this out in your thoughtful column in today’s Miami Herald.

Ms. Sosa,

I must confess that at the end of the 1970s, a glorious time what with Jimmy Carter in charge and the big climate problem being Global Cooling, I used to squirt Right Guard spray deodorant out my bathroom window every morning. Before I got my mind straight I used to say, “To Hell with the ozone layer”. Who knew?

Page 1 of today’s Miami Herald features the gruesome photo of the rape, looting, and pillaging of the sacred Amazon rain forest. Thank God my children are long gone because the photo reminded me of a still from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The sight of a noble teak and a majestic mahogany accepting their fate like Gandhi was more than I could bear. I folded the first section over and put it in my compost bin.

The only good thing coming from that photo of the flora and fauna Holocaust was that I got to your column quicker than usual.

You chronicle our environmental sins in a most artful manner.

That we are at fault there can be no doubt.

Man’s greed fueled the Industrial Revolution. It ended the era of Man living as Noble Savages. The first Devil’s instrument was the steam engine. Not being quick enough man then spawned the internal combustion engine. It was bad enough that the dinosaurs died out but their bones became yucky hydrocarbons. Having exploited the limited supply of organic plastic to extinction we then combined both Pandora and Prometheus and invented inorganic plastic. Having challenged the Gods we now suffer their wrath.

The noted medieval climatologist, Tony Vivaldi, was the original chronicler of climate change. We ignored him.

You showpiece some revolutionary changes adopted by Miami/Dade county in the early ‘90s. Alas, they were never fully implemented. There are rumors of a hunchbacked gnome known as Cheney the Destroyer who unleashed his dreaded doomsday Halliburton device on the elected officials. They could not resist his proffered lucre and swag. “They” should be tied to the docks behind Herald HQ so they can die slowly once the water from the melting icebergs gets here.

You state, quite correctly, that over population is the problem

Until 4th or 5th trimester abortions are allowed we will have that problem. Perhaps Death Panels can be formed to pick and choose, “cull the herd” as Margaret Sanger suggested. Every 10 years, on our birthdays, we see who makes the cut, so to speak, and who gets the chop. Perhaps coincident with your first Social Security check, gratefully drawn from the sacred Lock Box, your name is entered into a Terri Schiavo reverse tontine. If you draw the short straw you get to starve to death. Your journey to the “undiscovered country” will be made easier by the facts that you are decreasing the world’s carbon footprint and that whatever remains of you will be fed to the endangered Florida panther. You’ll cross the Styx singing Kumbayah.

There is one thing we can do right now.

Since I am neither a media person nor an ink stained wretch the burden falls on you to start us on the path to righteousness.

If you believe in what you write and in what you tell us to do you will no longer live in an air conditioned world.

Did you know that more than 50% of the electricity generated in this country comes from burning coal? Floridians are complicit in the destruction of our planet, and don’t forget that it’s the only one we have, by their acquiescence to this genocide. It’s bad enough our planet is going to burn up but it’s going to burn up in a lung charring smog.

Turn off the A/C in your house. Turn off the A/C in your car. Tell the Big Bosses at the Herald to turn off the A/C where you work. Believe me, they will jump on this cost cutting move the way a drowning polar bear jumps on an injured baby seal.

I loooove it when a plan comes together. Thanks for your column.


Kevin Smith


PS – Enclosed is a letter I sent to your bosses. I am sure they will be most receptive. The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. You go, girl! I’m right behind you.