Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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Bill Spikowski deserves an answer. He's the former city planner who asked, in Sunday's Star Tribune article "Not giving up on a dream," "Why would you say we shouldn't enjoy it for 30 or 50 years?" He was responding to the idea that we should rebuild on the low-lying coastal areas that have and will continue to experience major hurricane damage and flooding as the climate warms.

So here are a few answers: 1) Building in these areas of certain flooding costs a great deal of public money for roads, water, sewer and utility lines, schools, hospitals, fire and police stations. In addition, we have to prepare for and carry out major rescue and repair operations, at the risk to human life. At the very least, residents should cover all of those costs, since the public investments could be made where they won't be wiped out in our lifetimes. 2) Large-scale mitigation strategies to protect against erosion and seawater penetration and to preserve the ecosystem cannot be designed and carried out when the properties are carved up and privately owned. We would leave for our grandchildren a severely degraded environment that could have been avoided. 3) In 30-50 years, there will be a population of coastal homeowners who insist that we take extreme measures — perhaps enormous sea walls that are unlikely to work in any case — to protect the lives they have now come to cherish.

So, Mr. Spikowski, it's time to move on.

Lawrence Rudnick, Minneapolis

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So should federal taxpayers continue to be the predominant players in bailing Florida out, especially when the devastation from hurricanes is only going to get significantly worse in the future? And out-of-staters, including many snowbirds, have been moving there in droves.

There are certainly many instances in states where significant outside help can easily be justified. But is this the case in Florida? Perhaps not.

J.R. Clark, Minneapolis

The letter "Cost-benefit is clear: Build" (Readers Write, Oct. 14) hastily dismissing concerns about development displacing eagles tragically and blindly reflects the human-centric vision of life that is bringing us the sixth extinction and repeats the catastrophic false choice between economic growth and environmental protection that brought us climate change. The writer fails to recognize the interconnectedness of all life-forms that goes far beyond losing a single eagle's nest. As trees and wildlife habitat are lost to unchecked development in the name of density throughout the region (including the loss of an eagle's nest here and there and everywhere), we fragment and threaten the web of life on which our own lives depend.

The letter also paints a simplistic and false trade-off between urban density and urban sprawl; one need only drive (or bike) out of Minneapolis to see the relentless loss of green space in suburbs that further diminishes our environment and our own health. While an easy and superficial rationalization for driving wildlife out of urban spaces, destroying habitat in cities is not preventing urban sprawl. In truth, humans must limit our growth and mitigate the environmental damage we wreak on our planet rather than continue to exploit and extinguish other forms of life who also have a place in keeping our ecosystems intact. Yes, it's most definitely "time to rethink this narrow conception of environmentalism" that puts humans in the center of life and justifies the destruction of other species. It's time to protect other species who have just as much need and right to live in our cities.

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In response to the letter "Cost-benefit is clear: Build": The writer is OK with tearing down trees so that we can protect the environment.

Before tearing down trees and tearing up golf courses, we should renovate dilapidated housing throughout the Twin Cities first. Offer tax incentives and subsidies.

To assume someone looking to live in St. Paul will move miles away if this project isn't built makes no sense.

The housing market is softening. I am confident you can find housing in St. Paul without tearing down these trees.

Sunday's article on the death of our oldest trees due to drought grabbed my attention ("Oldest trees in peril after dry summers"). The Star Tribune should print more articles like this to inform and educate its readers of the slow-moving natural disaster that this drought represents.

I am concerned that our treasured urban forest will be harmed beyond repair if human beings don't help. The signs of drought-stress are obvious: smaller leaves, lack of leaves at the top, black and dead branches punctuating the canopy. Some trees are entirely dead. More will fail to leaf out in the spring and die. Just to be clear, I am not talking about ash trees that are dying due to emerald ash borer. All other trees are falling victim to the drought.

Trees make life better in so many ways, from enhancing property values to supporting good mental health. The movement to increase tree canopy in tree-starved neighborhoods shows that there is a growing awareness that the presence of trees enhances quality of life.

It's not too late. Water is what the trees need and humans can supply it. The situation is urgent.

Again, I urge the Star Tribune to continue to fulfill its duty to inform its readers about the progress of this historic drought, its effect on our green world and how readers can mitigate the problem.

Over the past few weeks the Star Tribune has published commentary and multiple letters on why newspapers are in tough financial and competitive shape. All have displayed a profound ignorance of the subject.

The challenge for newspapers has nothing to do with their so-called monopoly on news. The challenge, since the rise of the internet, is that in pre-internet days, newspapers made their money from advertising, and especially classified advertising, over which they did have a local de facto monopoly.

For one reason or another, newspaper management failed to envision the rise of internet-based services like Craigslist for buying and selling "stuff," Monster and its successors for recruiting, and Zillow and Realtor.com (among others) for real estate ads, and took no steps to modify their business models to deal with the threat.

That's why they're failing. It has nothing to do with losing their monopoly on news dissemination as, from a business perspective, the role news played in the business was to attract readers, not to generate revenue. Advertisers were buying exposure to those readers. That's how the business worked.

It's especially sad that these misinformed commentaries ran in a newspaper whose management must thoroughly understand this point from firsthand experience.