Blame Congress for our energy woes
To the editor:
Those senators asking oil company executives why the price of gasoline is so high were asking the wrong people. They should have been addressing the images in their own mirrors with questions such as:
Why are we not drilling for oil in the Alaskan arctic and off the coast of America?
Why are we not taking advantage of the large reserves of oil contained in oil shale deposits?
Why have we not built a new oil refinery in 30 years?
Why have we not been able to start construction on any new nuclear power plants for almost 30 years -- while we've wasted fossil fuels to generate electricity?
Why haven't we initiated a major effort to develop fuel-cell powered vehicles that run on hydrogen from seawater?
Why are we not converting coal into a liquid fuel as an interim measure until fuel cells are more readily available?
Why have we delayed the completion of the Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel repository?
Why have we supported a massive effort to develop ethanol fuels that are energy-inefficient and are causing large increases in food costs for those who can least afford them?
Why have we permitted radical environmentalists to push us toward less-efficient energy choices?
These technologies were all available when I retired from the energy business more than 20 years ago. This does not look to me like progress. There are a multitude of alternative approaches to solving our energy problems. Why don't we avail ourselves of them all?
Hal Shaw
HENDERSON
Profiteers
To the editor:
I agree with some of your previous letter writers who have complained about the high profits of our oil companies and the compensation of their CEOs. Their weak replies to lawmakers about hedging for the time when their profits are down are lame excuses, at best.
I doubt that most of the major oil company CEOs are even old enough to remember when profits were ever down.
My father worked for Mobil Oil back in the '40s and '50s, when they were just a little red-flying-horse oil company. I remember him telling me about how the local gas stations make their profits, even back then when you got more for your dollar than just gasoline.
I don't mind paying for something when the costs are justified. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know the public is being shafted, especially when I watched my local gas stations raise their prices 10 to 20 cents on Friday. The justification: Happy Memorial Day Weekend.
Joe Schaerer
LAS VEGAS
Immoral transfers
To the editor:
In response to your May 16 editorial, "Agricultural handouts": Taxpayers shouldn't be forced to subsidize farmers or anyone else.
The idea that one person's needs are a moral claim on the assets of others has been used to justify countless redistribution schemes, from farm subsidies to welfare handouts to foreign aid. But this idea is false and unjust. Individuals have a moral right to what they earn -- not to what others earn.
Taxing one person to transfer his wealth to others is a violation of his rights and is not a legitimate government function. The government should protect our property from those who would steal it -- not steal it from us and give it to those who did not earn it.
David Holcberg
IRVINE, CALIF.
THE WRITER IS A MEDIA SPECIALIST WITH THE AYN RAND INSTITUTE.
It's about grant money
To the editor:
In 1972, some intrepid scientists decided that it was time to take a polar bear census, no doubt to dramatize the impending "Ice Age" that the intelligentsia at the time was so hysterical about. They counted 5,000 polar bears, aka "big white eating machines."
In 2008, other scientists managed to count 25,000 of the brutes. Now that's amazing fecundity, if I dare say! Unless my math is just a tad off, that's a five-fold population increase in just more than 35 years.
Yet, in the Review-Journal's Sunday Viewpoints section, there is a letter from William Fouts bemoaning the decreased fecundity of the Hudson Bay polar bear crowd. And, of course, he felt compelled to tell us about the severe melting in the arctic, conveniently forgetting to mention that the Greenland ice shelf has never been so thick.
It's a climate cycle, Mr. Fouts. People in the northern states and Canada just had the coldest and snowiest winter in years. And that includes northern Europe, Russia, China and even Afghanistan. And here's a big hint: It's not the first time in the past bazillion years that a climate cycle change has happened, just as Mother Nature intended. Nor will it be the last.
So why do I have the impression that this global warming/climate change hysteria is really all about college grant money?
Norman Yeager
HENDERSON
