To the Editor:
In an editorial of June 27 (“Action on climate change must be bipartisan”) you write “While the state has set forth on a bold course to cut zero emissions by …
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To the Editor:
In an editorial of June 27 (“Action on climate change must be bipartisan”) you write “While the state has set forth on a bold course to cut zero emissions by 2050, are we doing enough in the meantime?” Reading this, my immediate reaction was twofold: 1) What, specifically, constitutes that “bold course”? and 2) What, specifically, are we doing “in the meantime”?
Every so often, guys come knocking on my front door giving me a sales pitch about putting solar panels on my roof. My response to them, while trying to keep the cats from escaping and apologizing for my unkempt appearance, invariably goes something like this: “I believe climate change is real, and want to do my part—but what are the powers-that-be doing? Why aren’t they setting an example top-down? Why am I, a powerless individual, expected to take the initiative?”
Of course, these guys can’t provide me with an adequate answer, nor should they be expected to, as they nod in seeming agreement and head off to knock on a neighbor’s door.
Travelling around the city and state, I rarely see visible evidence of solar, either communal farm-type arrays or on individual buildings—be they municipal, commercial, industrial, whatever. Of 34 single-family homes on my all-residential street, only one has solar panels, and an informal canvassing of the wider neighborhood shows this to be about average.
So where exactly are the abandoned/under-utilized lots or brownfields mentioned in the editorial as potential solar building sites? And, given how long we’ve known about the existential threat of climate change, why haven’t such installations already happened? Or if they have, I fail to see the physical evidence, probably because I’m otherwise preoccupied with dodging the ubiquitous potholes and annoying tailgaters.
One thing Warwick has in abundance (in addition to potholes and rude drivers) is shopping malls with expansive parking lots where solar panels could be arrayed in large numbers on support pylons, with the added bonus of providing a weather-sheltered canopy for vehicles parked underneath (Michigan State University, for one, provides such a model—couldn’t Warwick’s CCRI hilltop campus be another?).
The editorial also asks: “Isn’t it imperative that we do more?” Absolutely, and the Beacon can do its part by providing us readers with ongoing coverage of actions the state and city are taking with respect to combatting the effects of man-made climate change--which is rapidly barreling down on all of us, whether we choose to believe it’s real or not.
Peter Carney
Warwick
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Straightnnarrow
Americans fell in love with the car after Henry Ford put it on the assembly line and made it available to millions. We were liberated by the car; we could go anywhere at any time with the turn of the key, and that’s what we did. We love big cars, small cars, fast cars, slow cars, new cars, antique cars, foreign cars, race cars, sports cars, hot rods, sedans, station wagons, SUV’s, top fuel dragsters, Corvettes, Vipers, Mustangs, pickup trucks and everything on four wheels to get us to where we want to go and when we want to go. We love the roar of four hundred horses and the screech and smell of rubber on the pavement. We love to polish our cars and put new gadgets on them like cast aluminum rims, white wall tires and boom boxes. It’s a guy thing. We left the crowded cities and went to the suburbs and the country followed us with its shops, hospitals, malls and gas stations. For the first time in history, going to the country was made available to the unwashed masses, i.e. Norman Rockwell’s family car portraits come to mind. When the Interstate highways were constructed, we got on those roads and left the squalor behind. What kid, whether red, white, black or blue, doesn’t want a car when he arrives at the ripe age of sixteen? What could be better than on a hot, steamy day to get in the car, twist the key, put it in drive, turn on the cool AC and listen to the best music or whatever on the planet?
Then along came the reds like Bernie Sanders & AOC and cows like Whitehouse & Romney with their endless tirades against the dark industrialists who will destroy the planet. They are cagey; they won’t tell us that we can’t have our cars anymore; instead, they tell us that they want to save the planet (that’s so rich as they fly their jets) and to do that you (not them) must sacrifice your gas guzzling car and go electric, or use the choo choo & bus. Last year, only 6% of the American car market was electric powered and the cows cheered because the trajectory is upward, but the 6% means that 94% of the buyers chose gasoline power. The Democrats and their Republican cows intend to change that number to 50% by 2030. Would anyone in his right mind purchase an electric vehicle if he had to drive more than 200 miles a day or play more than 18 holes on the golf course? When the temperature drops to zero and it doesn’t turn over, what do you do? When the car battery runs out on the highway; there is no spare battery in the trunk; and after the diesel powered tow arrives, you must wait hours for the battery to recharge.
They make no secret of their intentions- the free market where individuals make a choice will be replaced by the sword of state. California will prohibit the sale of new gas powered cars starting in 2035. RI Governor Democrat Dan McKee signed into law the 2021 Act on Climate, which grants to an unelected council, the power to set mandatory, enforceable climate emission reductions. Auto companies like GM, Jaguar, Volvo, Rolls Royce & Honda have vowed to go all electric by 2035 and most of the other major auto companies will follow suit. Most amazing is the fact there is little discernible opposition to their plan, not from the Republicans, not from the oil industry, not from the auto industry, not from the auto hobbyists and not even from NASCAR. We see endless ads of electric Audis driving up the Alps by woke ladies, and except for a few voices on the internet and radio, there is no resistance to this nonsense, so we will be relocated to the crowded cities again, and only the hoi polloi will be able to exercise the freedom we once all enjoyed.
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