By Mayor Pro Tem Steve Knoblock
Good morning, San Clemente!
It is with joy and humility that I thank the voters of San Clemente for allowing me to serve for an additional four years on your City Council. As we approach 100 years as a community, we have much for which to be joyful and thankful.
We have experienced in the last few years three significant landslides: Cypress Shore, Buena Vista and Casa Romantica. While requiring Herculean efforts to stabilize and resolve the situation, we can take joy and give thanks that no one was injured and that we have the skills and ability to take remedial action.
We were all shocked and disgusted by the recent attack on two Marines by a group of youths.
If we were a community, for example, like San Francisco or Oakland, this outrage would probably be ignored, demonstrating the incisiveness of the sacred writ “because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of men is fully set to do evil.”
However, here in San Clemente, we can take joy and be thankful that we have law enforcement like Sheriff Don Barnes and Capt. Christian, who are faithful to apprehend violent youths, and a district attorney, Todd Spitzer, who is faithful to prosecute and hold violent offenders accountable.
Some folks would like to take away our joy by their perpetual harangue that our climate and sea-level rise is an existential threat to the lives of us all. First, they foolishly claimed that global cooling would kill us all. When there was no evidence that the globe was cooling (except in wintertime, of course), they superciliously claimed that global warming would kill us all.
When no evidence of global warming could be found (except in summertime, of course) and with the polar ice cap being the largest it has been in over 60 years, their mantra predictably shifted to allege that the climate itself would kill us all.
I think we can take joy and be thankful that our Creator has angled the rotation of the Earth in juxtaposition to the sun so that our climate does, indeed, change. This change is called, in a word, weather. I, for one, am thankful for this and greatly enjoy the change in our four seasons.
Concerning sea-level rise, every first-year science student knows that there is no addition or subtraction to the amount of H2O in our planet’s eco environment. However, the sea level does rise and fall twice a day with the tides.
We have always had high tides, King Tides and storm surges, which will continue. The fact that Newport Beach added a foot or so to the height of their sea wall is not evidence of existential life- endangering, sea-level rise, but an effort to protect the millions of dollars’ worth of seafront property from damage caused by high tides and storm surges.
I recall reading somewhere that our planet will never again experience an existential threat from raging flood waters, the promise and assurance of which is, as I recall, evidenced by rainbows in the sky.
San Clemente, please join me in taking joy in the life that we have been given, every breath we are able to take and in our beautiful village by the sea.
Steven Knoblock was elected to a two-year term on the San Clemente City Council in 2020, and reelected in 2022. He’s serving as mayor pro tem for 2023.
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