Letters to the Editor for Sept. 16

This is very troubling and confusing to me.

I recall a few tenets from the Bible which I believe are applicable to this situation as well. Matthew 7:1 says judge not, that ye be not judged. Mark 12:31 says love your neighbor as you love yourself. Luke 6:31 says do unto others as you would have them do to you. Finally, John 8:7 states the one sinless among you, let him cast the first stone at her.

It always surprises me how easily the Bible and the Koran are used to destroy others, given both books purportedly represent the words and plans of a loving God. I just do not get it.

Steve Kaplan

Hood River

Energy revolution

I read with interest that Representative Johnson will be hosting an energy forum on Sept. 16, but I’m skeptical that the experts invited will advocate anything approaching the magnitude of changes necessary in our energy infrastructure.

Last winter Oregon experienced record low snow packs and this summer we had record high temperatures and wildfires. When our precipitation falls mainly as rain instead of snow and Mt. Hood glaciers continue to shrink, we get major irrigation challenges. Add summers getting even warmer and you get agricultural businesses wondering what to plant. The 2014 National Climate Assessment predicted that these effects will worsen with climate change.

US costs of allowing fossil fuel companies to dump their wastes into the atmosphere are estimated at $200 to $700 billion annually — around $700 to $2100 per capita, all of which we and our children will pay one way or another. The main damages are from health costs, land-use degradations, and climate change. Oregon should phase in fees for such costs of this pollution, and use those fees to build new, clean infrastructure — which also keeps jobs in the state instead of buying more fuels to burn.

Fortunately, clean-energy solutions are becoming available to replace the biggest pollution sources. Prices of both solar power systems and batteries for electric vehicles continue to fall more than 10 percent annually. Solar and wind power plus batteries will redefine our energy and transportation systems as thoroughly as PCs replaced typewriters and cell phones displaced wireline telephones. When will electricity rates reflect the shrinking costs of these new technologies — or will I have to install my own and just go off-grid?

We must prepare for dramatically rewriting Oregon utility regulations a la Texas, which deregulated everything except the wires, or a la New York’s Renewable Energy Vision program, which is starting from a clean sheet of paper. With our pollution problems and our utilities’ technologies and business models radically changing, how can utilities ask us to fund any further fossil-fuel infrastructure?

We need to reject business-as-usual and demand cleaner and cheaper energy and transportation.

Eric Strid

White Salmon, Wash.