SCIENCE

April 30, 2018

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: Science

I note that the House of Representatives rejected your four amendments to the annual FAA reauthorization bill, seeking to protect Orange County residents from the noise pollution from aircraft taking off and landing at the John Wayne airport.

I wrote about this last week. While the cause is a worthy one if taken in isolation, it is minor when compared with the bigger picture. “The House chose the efficiency of airplanes over your quality of life,” you complained to readers on your Facebook page. And rightly so. Their vote opts for by far the lesser of two evils. It is environmental folly to require aircraft to fly higher and wider around our local airport, using more fuel and increasing carbon emission pollution, in order to spare us (I include myself among those who dislike the noise) some relatively speaking small discomfort and annoyance.

In a planetary emergency like the one we’re facing, we need to consider the quality of life of all the world’s inhabitants, including our fellow-travelers in the animal kingdom. We’re all in this together. We all need to breathe clean air. We need clean water, and a stable climate. It’s not simply a concern for a handful of, well, mostly quite comfortable human beings, thank you, in this wealthy enclave of Southern California. That is, of course, if you believe the science, which apparently many of your colleagues don’t.

How about you, Congressman. Do you believe the science? Just wondering…

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.