Letters to the Editor

Carbon tax may help alleviate

climate change

We just had one of our wettest Aprils on record. Yet, more than half of our state is abnormally or moderately dry and almost one-fourth in the grip of severe drought.

Drought is expected here in Eastern Washington again this summer. What does it take to break the pattern of seasonal drought and wildfires in our state—and the northwest?

In the face of climate change, we need a tool with teeth and plenty of punch, but also ready-to-hand and user friendly. Carbon pricing — charging fossil fuel companies for their emissions — is precisely that.

A large-scale study published in Environmental and Resource Economics in 2020 found a 2% lower-average-annual growth rate in CO2 emissions over a 20-year period among countries with carbon pricing. A fee on carbon also spares the economic cost of multiple government regulations and lets the market drive clean energy use and innovation while creating jobs.

Studies have shown that when revenue collected is given as a dividend, or monthly cash back, the payment covers the increased energy costs for the vast majority of Americans. Please join me in urging Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell to include a carbon pricing provision in the budget reconciliation bill.

They can be reached at http://www.congress.gov.

We don’t have to watch the desert gain on us year-by-year or inhale toxins every summer.

We have a powerful tool at our disposal for restoring our climate, if we’ll only use it.

William Engels

Pullman

Way of life

inflation worse than price hikes

Inflation in the American way of life is worse than price inflation.

Giving back by corporations, celebrities, and ordinary folks is loudly and publicly proclaimed, but is done out of economic self-interest and is actually contracting.

There is an appearance of progress in human services and in democracy. Bright sassy TV commercials tout health, happiness and solidarity in families, when the opposite is true. Our leaders speak incessantly and boastfully of “our democracy” while they spend trillions with little to no accountability and usurp powers that are not their own.

Our primary and secondary schools supervise their well clothed residents all day long and crank out lots of grads. However, sliding test scores and grade inflation make a mockery of progress.

There is incredible inflation in gender beauty and strength. Billions are spent to enhance and decorate the skin, hair, and eyes, and to exaggerate the humanity and sophistication of leaders in society.

Their lack of internal beauty and strength is exposed when makeup is soiled by tears and private behavior hits the police blotter section of the newspaper.

Kimball Shinkoskey

Salt Lake City, Utah