To the Journal editor:

What was 2019? “It was the year that wasn’t.” (Hi and Lois cartoon, The Mining Journal, 12-28-2019) and “it was what it was.” Hi and Lois reflecting from 2019.

There are two major political parties in Congress, specifically, the Republican majority Senate, in which hundreds of bills are stalled, where little or nothing was done to save the environment, where the immigration problem lingers and universal health care is getting nowhere, and disharmony reigns and is reflective of the diversity that exists in the nation’s people.

The impeachment trial was a kangaroo court in reverse, with no evidence allowed towards the guilt or innocence of the accused, but where rhetoric was spewed, taking up time and space as empty as a vacuum void of substance.

We have more important things to work on and fight over than extending the U.S. hegemony over the world, while ignoring all life on earth, outside that of neoliberal policy of globalization for the profits for international corporations and the wealth of the wealthy, while too many suffer the ills of slave-wages, face the problems of nuclear war and environmental catastrophe.

One of which we spend too much on and the other not early enough. A nuclear strike would lead to action that will destroy life on earth as we now know it and we are living the reality of the effects of global warming, the extremes of weather, making it a crisis and an emergency that is leading up to and will be an environmental catastrophe of unimaginable proportions if we do not take up arms as if fighting World War III.

The regeneration movement is one answer to this. It “… calls for a transition from degenerative, climate-disruptive fossil fuels to renewable energy and from industrial food, farming, and land use to regenerative practices.” (“Grassroots Rising: A Call to Action on Climate, Farming, Food and A Green New Deal” by Ronnie Cummins, page 1)

What are the real costs of factory farming, including subsidies that organic farming do not have the benefit of, that make organic foods appear to be more expensive?

How health and beneficial are industrial foods and farming practices to the soil, for the people, including damage to land, health and the environment?

Sincerely,

FRED JAKOBCIC

Marquette