Dear Mother Earth: Happy Earth Day!

Please accept my loving thoughts and prayers. I know these past few centuries have been hard on you and with each new year now, your aches and pains increasingly manifest as greater heat, stronger storms and extinctions of many species.

Many of us humans now understand that we were wrong to extract so many fossil fuels from beneath your surface. With your increasingly harsh but understandable responses, you are alerting us to change our greedy ways, and to just love you. To love you back to good health.

On your next Earth Day, may you look and feel a whole lot better.

Melodee Metzger

Manoa

Don’t lose our ability to monitor tourism industry

House Bill 200, HD1, SD1 would curtail the scope of Hawaii Tourism Authority activity. If passed, it would serve to further handicap the state’s ability to monitor and understand the impact of an industry that remains vital to the economy and the livelihood of many of its residents. Passage would cost the state far more than what it purports to save.

The ability to analyze its effects is vital to managing tourism. What the bill does is akin to turning off the lights and PA system during a volleyball game at the Stan Sheriff Center. No one will know the score, and everyone will come away a loser.

Paul Migliorato

Vice president, Hawaii Economic Association

Opening Haiku Stairs would create problems

Ray Graham must not have aloha for residents in other areas of Oahu, or the lives of the Honolulu Fire Department’s emergency rescue crews (“Stairway to Heaven can be big tourist attraction,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, April 19).

He should go back and read the history of damage, destruction and general nuisance that residents of the Haiku Stairs area have endured.

A similar situation has developed over the years at Maunawili Falls. Visitors parking illegally, helping themselves to hoses at residences, defecating in yards, leaving food and other trash. And, of course, requiring rescue.

Now it’s occurring in the front of Maunawili Valley. Golf course owners banned parking on the trailhead access road to Mount Olomana, so now cars are all over the easements and sidewalks, dumping trash and drawing thieves who smash and grab.

Rescues are becoming more frequent. Nobody in their right mind would call this “inexpensive on-the-job training activity.”

Perhaps someone should start posting photos on social media of those hikers — the ones who have fallen 50 feet.

Andrea W. Bell

Kailua

It’s right time to amend the 2nd Amendment

It is amazing to me that the one- sentence Second Amendment to our Constitution is still an effective argument for all manner of guns that proliferate in America.

Consider the first two phrases of the amendment, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State….” No mention of arms here. What was important? A well regulated Militia.

Fast forward to 2021. The well regulated Militia is now the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Also important, the Militia “ … being necessary to the security of a free State.” This is referring to defense in the aggregate, not the individual.

The rest of the sentence, “ … the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” Why? Because a war had been fought against the British Army and Navy for freedom from British rule. That war was fought with the weapon of the day, muskets belonging to the people. Fast-forward again. Now our military does that with modern weapons.

Amendments to the Constitution can be amended. It’s about time we do that.

Ann Beeson

Chinatown

Evaluate small-minded police commissioners

Marie Manning’s letter expressed exactly how I felt, but didn’t cover the incompetence of the Honolulu Police Commission (“Ballard displayed strength, decisiveness,” Star-Advertiser, April 16).

For years, the commission bent over backwards to keep former Police Chief Louis Kealoha on the job, which obviously was not for the benefit of our community. The commission should go through a review process annually, just as arduous as the one it put Chief Susan Ballard through. Not one of them would be able to keep their job.

Finally, we had someone who was more transparent and connected, and especially more humane. Chief Ballard, you have done an exemplary job! Thank you for your service in such a difficult time.

Possibly COVID-19 has made the small-minded commissioners more mean-spirited, nastier and more incompetent. Too bad for the citizenry of Hawaii.

Sharon L. Young

Manoa

Use of force by police an issue in Hawaii, too

People describe Hawaii as a racial paradise. According to Honolulu Police Department data, Black, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities disproportionately experience force from police.

Recently, HPD killed a Micronesian child and a Black man in just over a week’s time.

Hawaii is not exempt from the systemic policing issues we see nationally.

The Honolulu Police Commission is woefully imbalanced, with mostly big business or law enforcement/prosecutor backgrounds. Yet the mayor recently nominated former HPD officer Benjamin Mahi, who withdrew his name from consideration.

Another insider is not what the commission needs.

We must urge the mayor to nominate someone who demands accountability and transparency from HPD, who represents and/or has worked with communities disproportionately impacted by police, and acknowledges racial and wealth disparities in Honolulu’s policing.

We need a balanced, community- driven commission.

Catherine Lee

Chinatown

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