Oil Dependence: Go for Sunlight, Reform

“End Oil’s Boom and Bust” (editorial, Nov. 26) says we should “consider a federal tax on gasoline that could help curb consumption.” Let me see if I understand your position. You believe that a good way to help the American economy is to increase taxes on gas so as to make travel more expensive?

It is true that dependence on imported oil is foolish. How about America putting its vast and underutilized farmland to good use by growing corn, turning it into alcohol fuel and burning that captured sunlight in our cars?

And if you want to get really radical, plant some beans and squash among the corn and run some geese through there to eat the snails. Compost green waste with the cow manure to feed the soil; recycling waste preserves landfills.

If we use a little imagination, America can become energy self-sufficient and have cheap fuel and clean land, water and air, not to mention putting a lot of people to work. Where’s the downside?

Grant Gregerson

West Covina

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John Balzar’s “Bush’s Drill-It Energy Policy Is Out of Steam” (Commentary, Nov. 23), if nothing else, is amusing. Balzar’s notion that President Bush is going to advocate fuel conservation is like thinking a bakery will ask people not to buy as much bread as they do. Balzar is indeed wishing upon a star. It will take more than wishing for America to “embark in a new direction to secure its future.”

How about campaign reform to take the government out of the hands of lobbyists like the automobile industry’s and create legislation that would mandate not only more efficient automobiles but cleaner ones?

Marianne Della Marna

Alta Loma

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“The Sacking of Science at Interior” during the Clinton administration should be obvious from the Nov. 25 Opinion piece by Jamie Rappaport Clark. The former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Clinton has now eased into a new position with the extreme National Wildlife Federation. In the new position Clark still opposes any drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge even though the oil is desperately needed and the drilling would not have any significant impact on the environment.

It is obvious from the piece that environmental zealot Clark is apoplectic since the Clinton-era environmental extremists have “moved on” and there is finally serious consideration of this country’s needs for survival balanced with the environment.

Charles J. O’Connell

Stevenson Ranch