Mailbag:

Regarding “Specific plan reopened,” Nov. 19:

I drive 30 to 45 minutes from Fullerton to enjoy your beaches. In raising the parking rate to $15, fewer visitors, much fewer, will park in the lots. (I am one.) In fact, I was there Saturday, and there were a scant few cars parked on a glorious day.

You are doing a disservice to the entire beachgoing community and the city of Huntington Beach. Why? Would you all like to pay $15 to park, even for a 60-minute jog on the beach? This is a “natural area,” like a park. I can understand a $5 fee, but $15 is totally excessive and outrageous. Also, handicapped people with placards should be able to park for free 24/7.

If you continue to charge $15, at least sanitize the bathrooms every four to eight hours and clean the sand more often!

Bird watchers are hatching trouble in Bolsa Chica

I walk four to five times a week on the Bolsa Chica. Now that the birds are arriving for wintering, you wouldn’t believe the number of photographers right down in the posted habitat areas with these huge telescopic lenses.

I mean, these people could take pictures of craters on the moon, and yet they tramp right into the vegetation, beyond the barriers to take pictures. It’s almost like a camera gives them some sort of entitlement. I do take the time, and my life in my hands, to tell them they need to get out of posted areas. Some do, but most don’t. I’m quite sure they know better.

I propose that the Independent run pictures of these ingrates. I can take some too, and post them in the paper on a weekly basis under “Bird Brains.” Maybe someone will recognize themselves and stop this deplorable behavior by people that would call themselves environmentalists in a New York minute.

Global warming solution on the forefront of conversation

With the opening of the international climate conference in Copenhagen, the world’s attention is focused on global warming and the resulting coastal flooding and extreme weather patterns.

An article in the respected World Watch magazine suggests that most man-made greenhouse gases responsible for global warming are emitted not from industrial smokestacks or car exhausts, but from meat and dairy production. This represents a substantial increase from the 18% contribution estimated by the 2006 U.N. report. (See www.biteglobalwarming.org.)

Chief greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is emitted by burning forests to create animal pastures and by combustion of fossil fuels to operate feed crop, factory farm and slaughterhouse machinery, trucks and refrigeration equipment. The much more damaging methane and nitrous oxide are discharged from digestive tracts of cattle and from animal waste cesspools, respectively.

Whatever the 190 nations’ representatives decide in Copenhagen, each of us can help reduce global warming three times a day. Our local supermarket stocks a rich variety of soy-based lunch “meats,” hot dogs, veggie burgers, dairy products and ready-to-eat frozen dinners. Product lists and easy recipes are at www.tryveg.com.