Opinion

For the last 18 years, I taught a special education class in the Pajaro Valley. Many of my students were farmworker children with learning disabilities: problems paying attention, reading difficulties, hyperactivity, autism, lower IQ and struggles with self-control. I was shocked to discover that one of the most widely used pesticides in the world — chlorpyrifos — has, after over 20 years of solid research at UC Davis, Berkeley, Columbia University and elsewhere, been linked to these difficulties in learning and behavior.

The UN’s October Climate warning is terrifying. We need profound changes in the next 10-12 years to build a more equitable world and sustain life as we know it. News of increasingly destructive, deadly California forest fires offer a grim vision of how continuing with “business as usual” might impact us locally.

Letters to the Editor, May 11, 2017

Entries are now being accepted for the Central Coast Wine Competition (CCWC), which takes place June 21-22 in Paso Robles.