Marin IJ Readers’ Forum for April 1, 2022
End businesses’ reliance on fossil fuels for good
In his recently published Marin Voice commentary (“Producing oil allows U.S. to break fossil-fuel reliance,” March 19), author Todd Hooper writes that we can reduce dependence on oil by increasing the amount we produce. But as long as we depend on oil, we’ll have price shocks.
Global commodities are subject to hiccups in supply and demand. They’re traded on Wall Street, which profits from the price volatility we’re seeing now. A few speculators are getting very rich at our expense. This is how the system is designed to work.
If we truly want cheap energy that isn’t subject to price volatility or susceptible to weaponization by corrupt nations like Russia, the answer is obvious: Replace fossil fuels with energy resources using fuels that can’t be commodified, like the sun and wind.
A big, practical step toward price stability and true energy independence would be to put an annually escalating national tax on fossil fuels. Return all revenue to individuals in equal shares. Start the tax low, but raise it meaningfully every year, to give everyone a reasonable time horizon to phase into new energy sources.
The return of the revenue from the carbon tax would protect consumers from any tax costs the fossil fuel companies try to pass along. Meanwhile, businesses would rapidly innovate to squeeze fossil fuels out of their supply chains. As demand for fossil fuels drops, so will both price volatility and prices themselves.
No amount of domestic drilling can alter a worldwide commodity system designed to produce price volatility. Continuing our dependence on fossil fuels plays into the hands of maniacal despots like Russian President Vladimir Putin. I urge our congressional delegation to include a carbon tax to protect individual consumers in whatever climate measures they might work on this year.
— Ray Welch, Marinwood
More cars are traveling faster on Point San Pedro
More and more people are driving too fast on Point San Pedro Road in San Rafael. The amount of traffic and the speed of vehicles have increased during the past few years.
I believe that very few drivers pay attention to the 45 mph limit. It would appear that many of the drivers are preparing for a Grand Prix race. Additional accidents will happen without proper policing.
— John Semone, San Rafael
Explanation of gas rebate as bad idea needed more
While I don’t always agree with the positions expressed in the editorials published by the Marin IJ, I usually appreciate them. However, I do take exception to the editorial written by the Bay Area News Group editorial board published March 22 with the headline “Mystery fuel charge in need of explanation.”
Calling Gov. Gavin Newsom’s gas tax rebate proposal and the gas-tax holiday bad ideas is not helpful nor enlightening in assisting the reader to understand the issue. The editorial’s explanation felt incomplete. It would be both preferable and educative if my newspaper rationalized its pronouncements with better explanations.
— Robert Field, San Rafael
Trump’s sprawling lawsuit further exposes his ties
Former President Donald Trump filed a sprawling federal lawsuit last week against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and 26 other people and entities. He claims they conspired to undermine his 2016 campaign by falsely tying him to Russia. Talk about chutzpah.
Those who have connected the dots on all the facts strongly believe that Trump was inaugurated in 2017 for one reason only. It seems clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin so despised Clinton that when intelligence department hackers acquired information from National Committee emails indicating Democrats were pulling back on campaigning in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan because those states were certain to carry Clinton, Putin had his internet espionage team transmit more than 170 million false messages and websites to those three states, pretending to be Americans and casting mostly false aspersions about Clinton.
I believe this was enough to influence naive voters in those states to allow Trump to win the obsolete, antiquated Electoral College (which should be abolished) by winning those three states by a total of only 77,000 votes combined. That’s how we ended up with the Trump Pandemic, the Trump Recession and the Trump Insurrection.
Lastly, I would like to note that Trump’s lawyer in this new suit is Peter Ticktin, who was previously suspended from practicing law.
— Larry Lack, Novato