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While the pope will get much press and many accolades for making this trip ("Pope arrives in Canada to apologize," July 25), those of us in the abuse community see it just a little differently. You have probably been aware of this issue for many years, I have been aware for many years, and native people have been aware of this for their entire lifetimes. As such, we tend to not be very excited over him now arriving with much fanfare to apologize.

It's a good PR move in a time when the churchwide synod is supposed to be listening to the people. Leaders are now asking us to state the problems that we have seen and experienced. One would ask, "Where the heck have you been for the last century?" If you are still asking me what's wrong, then have you not been paying attention, or could it be that you just don't care? The church has known about these schools since their inception, and they've known of the abuses that took place at them since their inception. Where was the concern? What action was taken to remedy this situation and address the needs of the thousands of victims? Books have been written about this, movies have been made, newspaper articles have been written, and still it went on. Now church leaders discover that wrong has been done and come to apologize. The people don't need their words, they need action, and they needed it a long time ago — ask the survivors of these schools. Are they aware that some of these boarding schools are still open?

It might sound trite to say, but we have heard this line from bishops all over the U.S. and in other countries: "If we have done anything to harm you, we are so sorry." IF! Show me the action. Show me how you've acted to remediate this travesty and assure us that it will never be repeated. Show me that you are holding the people responsible for criminal behavior accountable. Then we can talk about forgiveness. Until then keep the thoughts to yourself, as you've done for so many years.

Frank Meuers, Plymouth

The writer is a retired Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests leader.

Now, 42 years later, we jump for joy at the sight of one monarch gracing our urban backyard with their presence. There are lots of milkweed plants in the neighborhood, but as the article in Friday's paper suggests ("In peril, monarch butterfly placed on endangered list"), it may be too little, too late. It's but one more clarion call to action in this distracted world. Let's hope we haven't passed the tipping point.

Bob Close, St. Paul

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The threat of bee colony collapse deserves immediate attention from our state policymakers. Bees are our most important pollinators — hundreds of thousands of plants depend on their pollination. Accordingly, large-scale bee deaths have dire consequences for our environment and global food supply.

The most effective way to curb the threat of bee-killing neonicotinoids is, quite simply, to limit their use.

Christopher East, Minneapolis

The Star Tribune Editorial Board says that our independence from foreign energy will come from clean, renewable sources ("Voters must put heat on Congress"). True. But is it really that simple, or is there a trade-off? What about our supply of fertilizer, which requires enormous amounts of heat to produce? Generating the heat to make fertilizer at the scale we need requires natural gas. In fact, what we should be doing is keeping our natural gas in the ground and burning the foreign sources. That's an insurance policy against the possibility that we might not develop an efficient-enough process to electrify fertilizer production at scale. In that scenario, we must have natural gas available, and the best case would be that natural gas under U.S. soil. As bad as a warming planet will be, a world with limited fertilizer would be just as bad, or worse.

And that brings up a larger point about our energy needs. I've often read in this paper about the emissions of China and India. Yes, they pollute more, but only because their populations are so much larger than ours. On a per person basis, we use about two times more energy than in China and nearly 10 times more than in India. What does that mean? Well, if we think that the people of China and India will at some point in the future have the standard of living that we enjoy today, that means they will need to use as much energy as we use, per person. It's not enough, then, to have policy that just focuses on replacing fossil fuels with clean energy. We also need more energy in general. A lot more energy.

Spencer J. Kubo, Minneapolis

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The purpose of the CBAM is to eliminate the economic advantage of companies moving jobs to other countries that have not implemented a carbon fee and dividend program. We can suggest that people buy an electric car, take the bus and dry their clothes on a line outside, but saving money is more likely to get them to act. Citizens' Climate Lobby (which is pushing for a fee and dividend program) says that most households will break even or come out ahead with the dividend. This type of program can be started with a small fee. Inaction will cost everyone more due to climate related disasters and health impacts (deaths, floods, fires, tax dollars, asthma, etc.) that will only get worse.

Peter Berglund, St. Paul

I chuckled when I read Tyler Kistner's reasoning for his late filing of his personal financial disclosure form in his bid to beat incumbent Rep. Angie Craig ("Craig files complaint against Kistner over late filing," July 15, and "GOP's Kistner files delayed form after ethics complaint from Craig," July 21). His desire is to be a member of Congress and all the responsibility it entails. Yet he was delinquent by two months in filing his financial disclosure. His campaign stated that he has filed disclosures in the past and that his disclosure was unlikely to change dramatically. Sounds like it should have been a simple task that even I could have completed on time. All things aside, he might as well have thrown in "my dog ate it."

Does he think that the responsibilities tied to candidate filing deadlines and running for office are less than those he had as a Marine? I question if he is truly worthy of our vote if he cannot even complete a simple candidate filing task without incompetence. Who else you got?