Tainted by tourism
I agree wholeheartedly with Rochelle delaCruz and her column (Tribune-Herald, April 11) about the impact of tourism here on our island.
The last several years have seen a tremendous uptick in visitors, and the trash and crowds everywhere have become the norm. Services are affected, too. As we learned so devastatingly during COVID, quality medical care was especially tough to get, and still is.
Many residents have stopped going to the places they have enjoyed and loved for years, and crowds and traffic have ruined so many treasured experiences and created safety issues for all of us.
Car accidents have become a constant problem.
Here, where we live, the proximity of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park insures daily helicopter noise, traffic jams and long lines for restaurants and other services.
Now, with so many new residents flooding in with their mainland money, combined with the general inflation and supply-line disruption, people of modest means (most of us) are being squeezed out. It appears Hawaii Island will succumb to the gentrification poisoning Oahu and Maui.
Farewell, paradise, we will miss you.
Laura Buck
Volcano
Path of insanity
A serious lack in political profiles in courage in the United States and worldwide has led to:
1) ghost guns;
2) belief in conspiracies;
3) more autocracies, less democracies;
4) more dependence on fossil fuels;
5) more cross-border problems;
6) food insecurities;
7) forced emigration by political unrest and violence;
8) irreversible climate change;
9) dramatic increase in costs and decrease in life quality;
10) energy and water wars.
There’s not a lot to look forward to if we continue on this path of plain insanity that only humans could spawn.
We are all hoping that political profiles in courage will emerge and lead us to the promised land.
But, historically, we are in deep doo-doo.
Have a nice tomorrow.
Jeff Bigler
Wailuku, Maui
