Saving Ourselves From Energy Ignorance

Separate articles in a single day, when woven together, often indicate a pattern that we might fail to grasp. The June 11 paper, for example: devastating floods in Houston; an article about global warming leading to loss of snowpack in the Sierras, in turn leading to floods, water shortages, crippling economic costs to California and accelerated loss of biodiversity; an article about potential oil reserves that might add up to as much as three times that already exploited.

One could look at the latter article and conclude, as apparently President Bush has, that our energy “problems” can be solved merely by further exploitation. So what if by releasing the carbon that the Earth’s tectonic cycle has judiciously sequestered underground, California and the rest of the world should suffer?

We should be intelligent enough to put the pieces together. The reason for the elegant balance of temperatures, rainfall and other abiotic conditions that support such a tapestry of ecosystems is precisely that the Earth evolved a system for balancing the carbon-in/carbon-out equation. It is up to us, California. We have the institutions, resources and brainpower to develop, implement, institute and even sell, export and profit from the alternative clean energy technology that will save us from ourselves.

Martin J. Byhower

Redondo Beach

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Does anyone really think that the impressive 11% reduction in electric consumption in California would have happened under Gov. Gray Davis’ plan to shelter (read pander to) consumers? I think the evidence backs the strong stand (read tough love) of the Bush administration. And give an assist to the news media that hyped the effects of the crisis and led people to think that peak-load pricing was going to apply to all of their electric consumption. The free market is effective and practical.

John A. Bing

Laguna Beach

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On June 10, Opinion presented under the heading “Nuclear Power: Dead Trees Standing,” a cheerful essay arguing that since a very large dose of radiation will kill a tree, we should eschew nuclear power. I look forward to a follow-up in which it is argued that the downstream horrors of a burst dam make hydroelectric power unthinkable, and another in which we see that the consequences of Mt. St. Helens’ eruption make geothermal sources unacceptable too. While such silly linkages come easily, more difficult is the question: Why are Times editors so opposed to rational discussion of nuclear energy?

Noel Corngold

San Marino