Proposals to Cut Global Warming

Re “Clinton Offers U.S. Proposals to Cut Global Warming,” June 27:

As noted in your article, our president (and the EPA) lacks a clear understanding as to the causes of “global warming,” preferring to blame the transportation industry and the automobile for excessive consumption of fossil fuels, as a basis for expensive and impractical measures to cope with the problem.

In answering the complaints from “major industrial nations,” President Clinton fails to mention what he intends to do about the many forest fires mostly caused by lightning, which burn hundreds of thousands of acres of timber each summer. These contribute far more carbon dioxide to global warming than is contributed by fossil fuels.

PHIL C. BALDWIN

El Segundo

So the green Earth Summit people are decrying the lack of progress since Rio? Especially as to the global warming disaster? Perhaps because it is difficult to impress our citizens with the importance of a one-degree rise in temperature over the last 100 years. And 20 years ago we were being told that the world might be entering the next Ice Age.

But if carbon dioxide is to be the cause of global warming, why don’t we revert to harvesting our ancient and mature forests, which produce, with wildfire and decay, nearly as much carbon dioxide as they absorb in their slow growth? We should be planting even more young, growing trees than the 2 billion planted each year prior to Clinton’s “forest plan,” which reduced harvests in the Pacific Northwest by 80%.

These young, growing trees will absorb a pound and a half of carbon dioxide for each pound of wood grown, and give off a pound of oxygen. No better way to improve our air quality and subvert any threat of global warming.

STUART H. JONES

Claremont

As a young Republican, I strongly applaud the actions of the Clinton administration in imposing more stringent standards to protect our nation’s air quality (“Clinton Gives OK to Tougher Rules to Clean Up the Air,” June 26). Furthermore, I hope that my party’s congressional leadership follows the lead of Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) in fighting to defend these tough new standards. However, if Speaker Newt Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and their colleagues continue to flack for corporate polluters, the youth of the GOP will confront them in next year’s primaries.

DAVID S. RAGSDALE

Los Angeles