I appreciate former Sen. Bob Bennett for his recent appeal to good sense ("On climate change, let sense rule," Dec. 5). What would really make sense would be to take a whole-systems, long-term view of the effects of burning fossil fuels to provide our energy.
Our current combustion of fuels brings with it the cumulative costs of treating respiratory and other diseases, waging war to secure energy resources, smog, acid rain, and species extinction — not to mention the astronomical costs of climate disasters.
If even a portion of these is taken into account, then it most definitely makes sense to institute policies to promote a shift to clean, renewable energy sources as quickly as possible. A fee on carbon combined with a dividend of 100 percent of the revenues back to households (as proposed in the Save Our Climate Act — HR3242) would be a good start in having real costs reflected in our energy equation.
It makes a lot of sense to drive our economy to more livable and resilient outcomes.
Ben J. Mates
Salt Lake City
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To "Ben J. Mates" I think that you are a little bit late on asking for a tax on fossil fuels that are burned.
The majority of fossil fuels that are burned comes in the form of gasoline and diesel fuels. Those already are taxed More..
There are some good ideas here. The thing is, we need to get serious about this problem and not keep bowing to the established special interests who want to preserve the status quo. Had we taken our current approach in the past, we would be living More..
@ higv, the air is perfectly clean in a rural Idaho town of 200. That may be so. But maybe you need to get out a little. And maybe you should take note of how things were in the past before there were efforts to clean up the environment. Years More..