Letters: Dec. 5, 2019
Hybrid surprise
My wife and I recently bought a used Prius hybrid. After the papers were signed and we got the car home, we were blind-sided with an additional $75 charge for registration.
This is the penalty (fine) now being assessed by the state of Washington for buying a hybrid car with it’s higher fuel efficiency and lower greenhouse gas emissions. I seem to remember the state encouraging people to buy more fuel efficient cars with lower greenhouse gas emissions. I guess the state now wants us to go back to large cars with V8 engines that get 10 miles per gallon. I hope people remember this when a large part of Seattle is underwater and the Columbia River dries up.
David Himes, Kennewick
Costs of warming will be in trillions
In 2017, the costs of natural disasters in the U.S. attributed to climate warming were $306 billion. Since that time, the news has been filled with additional massive wildfires, immensely damaging hurricanes, freakish flooding events in the Midwest, and more — all very disruptive and costly. Many coastal cities here (e.g., New York, Miami) and around the world are imperiled by rising seas. These are just some of the more obvious effects, but many ecosystems that are critical to human economies and sustenance are also being degraded and threatened with all manner of potentially very adverse consequences.
This is the shape of the future with cumulative costs into the many trillions of dollars this century and some estimates that GDP will be decreased by 10% due to disruptions related to a warming climate.
The costs of inaction on climate warming are very likely to greatly exceed any costs associated with actually working toward solutions. We must rise to the moral challenge of addressing the climate crisis for the sake of our children and generations to follow. A carbon fee and dividend program would be a minimally disruptive and (would use) market-based means to help start us down the path to the necessary solutions.
Dennis Finn, Pasco
Changes needed in our drug policy
I am writing because of drugs and problems in our community. Heroin is more available, as well as fentanyl tablets. Cocaine is harder to find and more expensive. However, what are we doing differently than incarcerating our fellow Americans and herding them into prisons?
When Barack Obama and Eric Holder took the reigns of drug interdiction, I thought there was hope to lessen incarceration and deaths from drugs. Now we see that all efforts have failed to reduce supply and especially demand for drugs.
Our country is a leader in success with foreign policies, being a role model in the world. However, 90 percent use drugs safely while only 10 percent use with death and destruction in mind. The incarceration rates are again soaring and the opioid epidemic reminds me of the crack epidemic all over again. With no new tactics to try, it’s time we stopped incarcerating for drug use when gun deaths are more than half of all drug deaths in America.
With the push from Mexico to market blue tablets in Washington, we must find a sensible way to fight back. We must think outside tough laws to allow medicalization of drugs.
Eric Kalia, Richland
New target for immigration law?
From the ‘Funny Times” Cleveland, Ohio, paper dated October 2019.
RE: Trump’s immigrant stance.
“January 2021. President Standing Bear signed an executive order today to deport all Caucasians back to Europe.”
Gene Campbell, Richland
This story was originally published December 5, 2019 at 12:01 AM with the headline "Letters: Dec. 5, 2019."