Even more costly unintended consequences
To the editor:
Slashing CO2 emissions in the United States will create huge inflationary impacts and erode our standard of living. And it won't stop worldwide emissions from growing ("Senate votes to begin debate on global warming legislation," Tuesday Review-Journal).
The statistical models being touted as the scientific basis for our CO2-induced destruction do not prove that man or CO2 are responsible for global warming, and the predicted impacts are hypothetical. Taking such far-reaching actions before the causes and impacts are fully understood is folly.
The economic chaos that has resulted from Congress' corn-to-ethanol fiasco and from the housing bubble created by the government's easy-money-for-home-ownership scheme demonstrate that federal lawmakers don't have the scientific or economic knowledge to foresee the unintended consequences of such actions.
It may be five or 10 years or more before we know enough to take intelligent action on global warming, and this knee-jerk reaction will only create big problems. Action must be delayed until the necessary knowledge is at hand. We cannot afford any more costly programs based only on good intentions.
Tom Keller
HENDERSON
Environmental impacts
To the editor:
The proposed airport at Primm is an estimated 17-year project. Most of those 17 years will be spent not on construction, but on a federal environmental impact study. The government wants to ensure that construction on what amounts to a tiny dot of the Earth's surface does not disrupt the habitat of jackrabbits, turtles and spiders.
In contrast, Congress is now trying to pass a "cap and trade" emissions bill that would immediately place costly regulatory burdens on the American people, all in the name of global warming. Why don't lawmakers first authorize a decade-long environmental impact study on global warming? Is it because a noted scientist named Al Gore has already declared the global warming debate to be over?
If Congress would move cautiously on the global warming issue, we might find out that the whole uproar is a sham.
On the other hand, if Congress passes cap-and-trade legislation, we probably won't need the airport.
Mike Mathews
LAS VEGAS
Hope and change
To the editor:
Barack Obama keeps talking about hope and change but fails to define them.
What he doesn't want to tell us is that he hopes the middle class won't mind an increase in their income taxes, as he lets the Bush tax cuts expire while claiming this is not a tax increase.
Sen. Obama hopes we won't mind the change of law that brings back the fairness doctrine to eliminate talk radio. The liberals have a problem with opposing points of view being aired because their own ideas can't compete in the marketplace.
Sen. Obama hopes we won't mind huge increases in our utility bills and gasoline prices as he changes laws to limit carbon emissions by companies. Limiting carbon output will inflict massive costs on industry, which will in turn pass them along to consumers. This will also result in the loss of millions of jobs as companies are destroyed or forced to move overseas.
Sen. Obama hopes we won't mind the change to socialized medicine, which will lead to rationing of inferior health care, a denial of care to seniors and long waits for even routine surgeries. These are conditions currently found in countries practicing socialized medicine.
Sen. Obama hopes we won't mind when he changes our military from a power into a cowardly, retreating force that will be cut to the bone.
Result: Lots of change but little hope.
Robert Mangini
LAS VEGAS
The left will do right
To the editor:
In his Saturday letter to the editor, Clarence Lanzrath laments that Sen. Barack Obama might win the presidency: "This seriously concerns me, as the left would have complete control over the direction of our country."
Beginning in January 2001, the right had "complete control over the direction of our country."
We got an energy policy made behind closed doors with corporate heads of oil companies, a pointless and endless massacre of American and Iraqi lives for the benefit of those energy moguls, an uncontrolled and unregulated real estate market which now is imploding and taking the American economy with it, a Medicare redesign that placed tremendous financial burden on the populous that could least afford it while allowing pharmaceutical companies to rape the infirm, a terrorist attack on our own shores and destruction of our reputation with most of the world's leaders.
How's that working out for you, Mr. Lanzrath?
Randall Buie
HENDERSON
