Conservation education should be taught in schools

Regarding “Salmon shortage bad for fishers and consumers” (Front Page, March 11): On March 11, The Chronicle reported that California’s commercial salmon season looks dire for 2021. The loss of salmon will be particularly evident for Native American families and communities in Northern California, who rely on salmon seasons for food, income and cultural continuance. In these communities, the struggle to protect salmon and their ecosystems has been ongoing for generations.

Too often, these issues are overlooked in school curricula. Rarely do high school students learn about the complex political and ecological issues that affect their environments. Even more rarely do students learn about the contemporary Indigenousled efforts to protect California’s most important resources. The newly released Advocacy and Water Protection in Native California High School Curriculum centers Indigenous voices, histories, and current advocacy campaigns through lessons that can be implemented in science, social studies and language arts classrooms. By providing opportunities for students to learn about the histories and policies that directly affect them, and by encouraging young adults to become active in local, regional and statewide political decisionmaking, perhaps students and families throughout California can be inspired to advocate for California’s water and aquatic life.

Check for vaccinations

Regarding “GOP men are mooching off the rest of us” (March 24): Doyle McManus’s column got me thinking, as the prospect improves for reopening restaurants and bars: These businesses routinely check IDs of young people to determine their age, and also enforce minimum standards of clothing for health reasons (No shirt, no shoes, no service). I propose that they add a check of vaccination status for all patrons. When deciding where to spend my postpandemic dollars, I would prefer to support a business that adds no shots to its sign and refuses entry to anyone who has refused to be vaccinated. Of course, that would require some sort of tamperproof vaccination certificate, but I’ll bet Silicon Valley could come up with a phone app for that.

Successful housing

Regarding “Governmentrun ‘social housing’ could soften affordability crisis” (Front Page, March 21): Your article on social housing reminds me of a very successful nationwide housing program of the 1980s, where developers received funds from 20year taxexempt lowincome housing bonds to build and finance apartments, provided that 15% of the units were reserved for lowincome tenants. I developed and ran a program to provide AAArated guarantees for the bonds, by guaranteeing the financial institutions that serviced the construction and takeout loans financed by the bonds. I dealt with the financial institutions and some of the developers. The primary complaint I heard from the developers was that their lowincome tenants would make friends with their new neighbors, get jobs with them, and have their rents go to market rates due to their higher incomes. This would force the apartment owners to seek out new lowrate tenants for their next vacancies.

This very successful program created lowincome units at a cost of foregone taxes that, overall, cost the government some 2530% less than the cost of building new Department of Housing and Urban Development units. It was allowed to sunset because some of the legislators were offended that developers were making money by using taxexempt funds. We should bring it back.

Future of climate change

I have been thinking about how the next generation will judge us when looking back on our response to climate change.

They will ask if we knew in our hearts that burning fossil fuels would destroy the planet.

Will we tell them we didn’t trust the data and couldn’t figure out how to transition safely to a clean energy economy even though viable alternatives existed?

They will ask why we taxed cigarettes and alcohol to reduce harmful consumption but not carbon emissions. Will we say that the oil industry was so powerful that we couldn’t get sensible climate legislation passed? They will ask if we knew that underprivileged communities were suffering the worst. Will we say that it seemed OK because big oil companies and wealthy investors were driving the economy and profiting at the expense of their health and the health of our planet? Or will they ask how we created a clean and healthy future?

We will proudly say we supported a revenue neutral carbon fee and dividend that transformed our energy economy while creating jobs and protecting the vulnerable and the environment. Each of us can take action now to change this future conversation.

Socalled patriots

What can be said of a country in which the “patriots” are those who demand unfettered access to weapons designed with the sole purpose of killing other humans, who dismiss the role of those guns in senseless mass murders, and who bristle at the “socialism” that would give us better mechanisms for diagnosing and treating those whose mental illnesses they routinely blame for these atrocities?