Travel and its effects on the environment

So now we should embrace global warming as a benefit to travel? What’s next: iceberg melting tours; watch the polar bear demise package deal; Iceland and its disappearing glacier cruise? We should be concerned more about our carbon footprint and the legacy we are leaving generations to come.

Gina Maslow

Venice

Don’t remind me that we have been and are cruising for a bruising [“Sampling Luxury” by Rosemary McClure, May 8]. Look, I can afford and deserve to travel. Do I care that cruise ships burn a barrel of oil for every ship length traveled through the water? Do I care that airplanes are responsible for 7% of the CO2 in the atmosphere? Do I care that burning fossil fuels have melted the Arctic ice and created climate change and extreme weather? Should drought-caused forest fires burning around the oil shale production region of Fort McMurray, Canada, concern me? Don’t think so. I’m out of here.

Roger Newell
San Diego

Joining Pancho Villa’s fight

Re: The fine article on Columbus, N.M., and Pancho Villa [“Go in Peace” by Catherine Watson, May 1: Sometime in the 1920s, my Japanese grandmother received a letter from her brother who had been barred from entering the U.S. by one of the exclusionary acts of that period. He had written to tell her he had emigrated instead to Mexico and was fighting with Villa. And then he disappeared into history.

Kiku Terasaki

Laguna Beach

Driving in Mexico

Thanks to Catharine Hamm for her article about driving in Mexico and sorry that her Mexican driving experiences have been a turnoff [“If You Drive in Mexico ...”, On the Spot, May 1].

Most adventurous travelers would disagree with her opinion and love the freedom to explore a “real” Mexico vacation by driving.

My husband and I have traveled to all parts of Mexico for the last 20 years and always rent a car. Enduring the occasional credit-card fraud or prior-damage issues is part of the package. We wouldn’t consider relying on local service. Driving in Mexico is a beautiful ride and establishes you on par with the locals rather than announcing your tourist status when you hop from a taxi. It has also allowed us to go “off campus” and see places few have been.

Becky Schultz Burns

Chatsworth

Get a small flash drive that will attach to your keychain. Put in key information. On mine I have insurance information (no social security number), my medical history, list of medications, license plate numbers, emergency contacts and list of doctors. I add to the drive as more things come to mind.

David DiCicco

Del Mar