ON THE TOWN:Newport voters must consider airport issues

One of the most important communications in this election season was a letter to the Daily Pilot that was printed Sunday.

The letter pointed out the rather tame approach by the current crop of Newport Beach City Council candidates to one of the two most important issues facing the city, namely, the status of John Wayne airport.

This issue, control over the growth of the airport, is the most important issue facing the city this election and one of the most important in its history.

Yet in all of the campaign rhetoric I’ve heard and in all the literature I’ve seen, airport expansion is treated as a foregone conclusion. And don’t be fooled into a sense of false security by Tuesday’s vote by the Orange County Board of Supervisors. The question of airport expansion requires constant vigilance.

This may be because unlike Greenlight II or any of the other important decisions that need attention, airport growth is not strictly in the hands of voters or the City Council. In other words, other governing bodies have a major say in the eventual size of the facility.

On the surface, it may seem as though Newport Beach does not control its own airport destiny — that whatever happens will be the result of outsiders dictating what will be.

But the reality is that the right people in the right positions can wield considerable influence over what happens to the airport.

This is a critical time for the city of Newport Beach. Plans for further expansion of John Wayne must be treated as seriously as a war on our lifestyle. I urge Newport Beach residents to vote for City Council candidates who have made the airport expansion their top issue.

There are a number of readers who will delight in this position and will wonder why, if I am so much against the expansion of John Wayne, I did not support the airport at El Toro.

My position has been clear and consistent from day one: I did not support an airport at El Toro, and I favor a reduction in flights from John Wayne.

I have even advanced the idea of eliminating John Wayne from the county. I don’t want a busy airport anywhere near where I live.

For those who think that getting rid of John Wayne is nothing more than a pipe dream, I will remind them that in my lifetime, I have seen a man walk on the moon, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the invention of a portable device that enables us to talk to each other from thousands of miles away, anywhere in the world. You know that as a cellular phone.

I’ve even heard talk that the number of hot dogs in a package may soon equal the number of hot dog buns sold in a separate package.

Against all that, the prospects of a John Wayne-free Orange County do not seem so bad.

This from someone who uses the airport regularly but would gladly give up the privilege and drive to Ontario or Los Angeles instead.

But we must be realistic too. So while we make the case for life without John Wayne, we must support the strongest candidates with the strongest arguments against more airport growth.

I am as opposed to new taxes as anyone can be. But because the protection of Earth’s environment is the most important issue facing not just our nation but the world, human beings, it appears, must be forced to change certain behaviors that are destructive to that environment.

I have stated before in this space that Americans will change their behavior to accommodate new circumstances. But as long as a gallon of gasoline remains a relative bargain at even $3, we will continue to drive our cars as though there were an endless supply of oil and as though the exhaust from those automobiles was harmless to the environment.

As long as electricity is relatively cheap, we will continue to power our homes and businesses with the same disregard, and as a result, we will continue to suffer an increasing number of brownouts and blackouts each summer.

It seems that the only way we are going to change our ways is through some pain in our wallets — in this case, more for a gallon of gas. But if that pain results in an environmentally safe car or in the vast expansion of solar power to run our homes and businesses, it will have been worth it.

We have given both private enterprise and government enough time to meet the energy challenge and they have failed to do so.

I want you to vote yes on Proposition 87 on Nov. 7.

Proposition 87 will raise about $4 billion to provide incentives for alternative energy sources.

And maybe, just maybe, gas will hit $5 a gallon, or more, and we’ll stop driving a mile to the supermarket or the dry cleaners.

I don’t know that this proposition or this money is going to meet all our energy challenges. I do know that if we continue to do as little as we have been doing, our children and our grandchildren will suffer.