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Through their 17th annual Beat the Heat initiative, the city of Dallas is working to offer residents without reliable access to air-conditioning respite from brutal Texas summers. A reader shares her concerns about climate change.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joel Prince\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n
Climate change \u00a0<\/p>\n
The average temperature in the DFW area last month was 102 degrees, 6 degrees hotter than normal. Like everyone else, I felt it! Such heat threatens the sanctity of late summer traditions. Who wants to grill when it is 100+ degrees? It also degrades our infrastructure, causing sidewalks and roads to expand and crack, stressing the power grid, etc. Potholes multiply while energy bills rise.\u00a0
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Climate change is a feedback loop on a much larger and more oppressive scale. When we burn coal, oil and gas it releases pollution which gets trapped in the atmosphere, overheating the planet and making extreme weather like heat, floods, ice storms and hurricanes much worse. We’ve experienced all of these in the past few years.\u00a0
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With the recent UN report saying global warming will exceed the limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius, every fraction of a degree that we can avoid matters. \u00a0<\/p>\n
As we head into midterm season, please join me in asking our elected representatives to do more, faster. Congress can advance American innovation and energy reliability and reduce pollution without sacrificing prosperity, if we demand it. \u00a0<\/p>\n
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We have a responsibility to protect our country. Our quality of life is on the line.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Quality of life \u00a0<\/p>\n
Re: “Don’t sell our parks,” Aug. 13 editorial and “The worst idea in Dallas? Billboards in the parks,” by Mark Lamster, Aug. 30 Arts & Life column. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Well, there goes the neighborhood \u2014 and don\u2019t be surprised if your local park is next. The invader in this case is the IKE kiosk and its rotating digital advertisements embedded along Turtle Creek Boulevard at the intersection of Bowen Street-Cedar Springs Road. What a blemish and frankly, a sell-out by Dallas City Hall for what was once the city\u2019s most impressive parkway. \u00a0<\/p>\n
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Apparently, this is part of the city’s strategy to maximize revenue by looking for nickels and dimes on the streets and in the flower beds. It is to align with the department\u2019s priority of operational excellence. Really? \u00a0<\/p>\n
If this is policy, then this twisted policy needs to be buried at the McCommas landfill. The city once tried something similar on a 60-day trial basis in March 1939, but it was promptly rejected as preposterous. \u00a0<\/p>\n
It comes down to the quality of life people seek in selecting a place to live. Parks provide relief and a calm balance to our daily routines. Our park system\u2019s parks, parkways and plazas should be what sells our city to attract businesses and people. Not digital kiosks or billboards selling ads in our parks. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Robert Prejean, Dallas\/Oak Lawn\u00a0<\/p>\n
Twisting the narrative\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump advisor Peter Navarro justifies our trade war with Canada by saying Canada has taken advantage and had their way with us since NAFTA in the mid 90s. Facts: Since then, Canada\u2019s unemployment rate has stayed 1-3 percentage points above the U.S. rate. Since NAFTA, the relative size of our economies has remained stable, roughly 13 times in favor of the U.S. Our own GDP has quadrupled since 1994. \u00a0<\/p>\n
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Between February 2022 and April 2024, the U.S. unemployment rate was 4% or lower, one of the longest stretches of such strong employment in U.S. history. Thirty years ago, the Dow was 5,727. Now it’s 52,000. So how did we get taken advantage of?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Madagascar is a tiny Indian Ocean island nation that has 30 million people earning about $2,000 a year. U.S. GDP is 1,500 times that country. Citing the trade deficit between our nations, in April 2025, Trump announced a 47% tariff on them. Is that supposed to punish that poor country and its citizens? The result had the impact of causing vanilla bean prices (its prime export) to rise sharply. That tax is 100% absorbed by us. It made such poor sense that the tariff was quietly taken to 3% now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump uses his tariff policy as a referendum on his own ego to punish nations that don\u2019t bow down to him or hurt his feelings. It ticks off our closest allies and emboldens our enemies to act aggressively and irrationally. \u00a0<\/p>\n
How can we and other nations who share our common values trust our government when this administration lies and twists the narrative on so many obvious distortions \u2014 tariffs only being one thing?\u00a0<\/p>\n
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You’re our friend\u00a0<\/p>\n
To our Canadian neighbors: I grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. My dad bought property in Fawn Island, a Canadian island in the St. Clair River, and we would load up our boat with all we needed for a weekend and motor down to check in at the checkpoint in Sombra, Ontario almost every weekend in the summer. Our family spent summer weekends swimming, fishing, water skiing and just having fun there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I also remember the hospitality you offered on Sept. 11, 2001, to all the flights that were diverted to your airports when the United States closed all air traffic because of the attacks on New York City, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon. You opened your country and your homes to the travelers that unexpectedly arrived on your doorstep and offered comfort and hospitality to all the passengers and crews.\u00a0<\/p>\n