Mailbag: Some beachgoers are putting enjoyment ahead of safety

I live half a mile north of the beach and try to walk down the hill (Superior Avenue) three or four times a week. When the latest beach rule was instigated a few days ago stating that “active recreational use” is permitted on the beach that allows walking, exercising, surfing and other uses, I expected to see a bunch of people engaged in those activities.

What came to mind when I got to the beach was the old adage: Give an inch and they’ll take a mile. I saw a bunch a people just laying out on the sand with nary a movement, save or reaching in the cooler for a cold one. It’s sad when people are given something, then immediately take advantage of it.

Bill Spitalnick

Newport Beach

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Beach protests go against the elderly

What a lovely Mother’s Day present. Apparently it is just fine to kill your mother or grandmother with COVID-19 if you catch it in a mob of unmasked whiners. This so that you get a bit more beach time.

Roberta Fox

Costa Mesa

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Don’t forget the other crisis: climate change

In response to the recent op-ed co-authored by Shahir Masri and Robert Taylor, the global coronavirus pandemic has taught us discipline, patience and humility (“Commentary: It’s not a stretch to juxtapose the coronavirus and climate change crises,” April 24). It has created unsung and unlikely heroes as humanity races to find a vaccine.

Meanwhile another much more ominous global environmental problem looms larger by the day. It also has a timetable of about a decade before it affects much more than the human population. It’s climate change, and it’s a planet killer.

We already have a prescription for a cure. It’s the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (House Resolution 763) pending in Congress, and it will replace the emission of harmful greenhouse gasses with a clean-energy future. It even has positive international provisions and implications. We need the same will, resolve and discipline to pass it now. Humanity and the world will be better off for it.

Curt Abdouch

Costa Mesa

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