Controlling Emissions or Just Blowing Smoke?
Why is trying to get more gas mileage out of a car or truck anathema (“State’s Auto Emissions Bill Is Just So Much Gas,” by Benjamin Zycher, Commentary, May 8)? If the car manufacturers want us to continue buying SUVs, then they have no choice but to increase mileage. Otherwise, who will be able to afford the gas to fill them? The price of gas is hovering around $1.70 a gallon right now.
What is Zycher’s answer going to be when it gets to $2 and stays there? Nuclear power creates the most dangerous form of pollution known to man. It’s called radioactive nuclear waste. Just because it doesn’t come out of a tailpipe or smokestack doesn’t mean it’s nonpolluting.
Bob McCall
Los Angeles
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Having a PhD in atmospheric science, I want to assure Zycher of the scientific consensus behind predictions of further global warming. That said, I agree with his opposition to AB 1058. The last time California tried to “be a leader”--by building only windmills and solar cells and stalling power plant construction--the state brought about an energy crisis that Enron exploited but did not cause. Carbon dioxide emissions will be globally curbed if and when the warming becomes globally inconvenient and painful. Nuclear power will then be clearly seen as a lesser evil.
Mimi Gerstell
Pasadena
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Zycher may be correct in his assessment of California emissions policy, but to smear people who sincerely want clean air and better health as “environmental leftists” does not further this debate. If Zycher walks or bicycles along congested roads, he’ll get a lungful of why we need regulations to curb the poisonous exhaust emissions from all motor vehicles.
Peter Dixon
Malibu
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Zycher touts nuclear power to solve emissions problems, but then your May 8 article (“Nuclear Dump Will Leak, Scientists Say”), points out that all high-level nuclear waste dumps will have unacceptable leakage. Needless to say, use of nuclear power has to cease as soon as possible because of this waste disposal problem, the only responsible solution to which, unfortunately, has to be multi-barrier, monitored and retrievable storage for at least 15,000 to 20,000 years.
No burial technique can ever be acceptable, because of basic engineering principles. All waste containers have to be retrieved and the waste repackaged whenever leakage occurs, be it in 20 years, 200 years or 2,000 years.
Sheldon C. Plotkin
Los Angeles
