Bob Lanfelder

Dear Friends: Thanks to Shelly Tanenbaum, Kathy Barnhart, and Rick Herbert for their Western Friend article (Jan/Feb 2021) on their role in encouraging University of California’s divestment from fossil fuel companies. I appreciate their Quaker modesty about their role and about what divestment can do. By itself, divestment cannot bring Exxon, Chevron, Shell, & Company to their knees, but . . . “small steps,” as some Friends say. 

Dear Editor: I came away from Hayley Hathaway’s upbeat “A Vision of 2050” in the May/June issue thinking, “Sounds great, but does she really believe in what she says here? Or is this just forced hopefulness, so your readers do not despair, facing not just the present, but the future, too?” Sleeping on it, I realized that most 2050 predictions are negative – to be honest to the “facts,” but also to motivate us.  ~~~

Dear Editor: The article by William Ashworth of Ashland, OR, in the May/June 2020 Western Friend is a perfect example of righteous, individual fossil fuel purity that judges the rest of us gas users as sinners. No analysis on how we transition to get whole society off fossil fuels. No accounting for all the fossil fuels that went into making his Chevy Bolt EV.