Only largest polluters will be affected by new rules Re: “Obama’s carbon deals kill jobs, benefit Big Business,” Editorial, Dec. 30 Interwoven with all the bluster and apocalyptic rhetoric against the federal government soon beginning to control harmful fossil fuel pollution, this editorial omits a centrally powerful point: the United States Clean Air Act is more than capable of implementing greenhouse pollution controls in a fair and efficient manner, and has done so successfully for 40 years with regard to other forms of harmful air pollution such as lead, carbon monoxide, acid rain and smog.
As for the domestic carbon limits at issue, only major industrial entities emitting over 75,000 tons of carbon dioxide (or other harmful climate change pollutants) will even need to apply for a permit at this point. And 75,000 tons of any kind of pollution is a lot; it’s 15,000 times more carbon than what an average American car might emit over one year.
Only very large corporate industrial entities will be affected by the new regulations. Cleaning up our act at home is the right place for real action to combat global warming.
William J. Snape,
Senior counsel,Center for Biological Diversity
American University, Washington College of Law
Economic choices directly related to cultural values
Re: “A truce in culture wars as voters focus on economy,” Dec. 29 Michael Barone is wrong to suppose there is a cultural and spiritual disconnect between financial priorities and cultural values. On the contrary, how we choose to spend our money — both individually and collectively through the instrument of government — is intimately related to our deeper cultural values.
Witness the Bible quotation in Matthew 6:21, where Jesus Christ says: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Our financial priorities are of integral importance to America’s so-called “culture war.”
Lawrence K. Marsh
Gaithersburg
Price of oil is driving up cost of food
When is our government going to wake up to the soaring price of oil that affects the cost of food? Don’t we have any politicians who can read history?
During the Carter regime, the OPEC embargo caused the price of oil to soar. Gas lines formed at every filling station. Aroused politicians authorized subsidies to oil companies to convert shale into oil, build windmills to generate electric power, and stockpile strategic oil reserves in abandoned salt mines, etc.
But as soon as the oil companies got started, OPEC dropped the price of a barrel of oil to $10 and the U.S. government forgot about our own resources.
When will the American people come to their senses and force immediate drilling off shore on the East Coast, scoop up the oil boiling to the surface along the shores of California, punch a hole in the ANWAR and get out of the way of the gushers, and open all the millions of acres in the lower 48 states blocked off by the Clinton administration?
Do we have to wait until 2012 to get a government that will act?
Joseph P. Carrigan
Fairfax
