Letters to the Editor: A ridiculous comparison of environmentalism and communism

Los Angeles Times Opinion
·1 min read
165
Demonstrators of the Fridays for Future movement march in downtown Rome, Friday, March 25, 2022. Climate activists staged a tenth series of worldwide protests Friday to demand leaders take stronger action against global warming, with some linking their environmental message to calls for an end to the war in Ukraine. (Mauro Scrobogna/LaPresse via AP)
Demonstrators with the Fridays for Future movement march in Rome in March. (Mauro Scrobogna / Associated Press)

To the editor: One of your letter writers faithfully regurgitated Fox News arguments on environmentalism by comparing it to socialism and communism. The rhetoric could have been taken straight from one of those 1950s anti-communist pamphlets.

Environmentalism actually stems from grass-roots efforts. The writer's sympathetic "struggling productive class" seems like a euphemism for conservative business owners who feel they deserve to pay lower tax rates than wage earners.

Does that hit closer to home?

Marie Blanco, Manhattan Beach

..

To the editor: One letter writer claimed that "environmentalism is cut from the same cloth as socialism and communism." It "wants to cheat the productive class out of having nice things."

What nice things are they? Yachts, mega-mansions, dishwashers, cellphones? Why would that be bad? Because the rich people would still have these things?

The fallacy in this argument is that the writer failed to apply the basic idea of communism: All people have more or less the same, and there are no "rich people." So everybody or nobody has nice things.

By the way, the definition of nice things might also be different.

Stefan Belger, Palm Springs

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.