Governor Cuomo plans to add 55 cents a gallon tax on gasoline to “stop climate change”. The legislature’s Chautauqua County Energy Subcommittee plans to help implement Cuomo’s strategy to make New York energy 100 % carbon free – as they explained to a recent meeting of the county legislature.

However, it is all based on a lie.

The lie is that carbon dioxide is harmful. Based on that lie, carbon dioxide must be stopped.

Wait what? Carbon dioxide is the food that plants eat. It is the basis of all life. Plants use carbon dioxide to grow leaves, wood, potatoes, peanuts, olives, apples – all made of carbon. While using carbon dioxide, creating fruits and vegetables, plants give off oxygen so animals and humans can breathe.

Carbon dioxide is what is pumped into greenhouses to promote plant growth. The more carbon dioxide, the more food. Carbon dioxide is .04% of the atmosphere. CO2 is passing from the atmosphere to plants, into the oceans, sequestered in rocks and released in a cycle that has gone on for billions of years. No solar panels or wind turbines can change the carbon cycle or have any effect on the climate. But more emissions are released during their manufacture than by the use of clean gas.

If carbon dioxide is the basis of all life then the elaborate plans of bureaucrats to get rid of it should go up in smoke. Cuomo’s political energy agenda is based on a scam to fleece taxpayers and ratepayers while paying the salaries of those who work to justify their own existence advocating for the elimination of carbon dioxide. In this region, solar projects take more energy to build than is created in the lifetime of the solar project. Wind turbines create 10% of what the developers claim. Both pay bribes to towns and landowners but they destroy the local economy and environment.

The planet has always warmed a little and cooled a lot in cycles for all time. Ten thousand years ago this region was covered in ice a mile thick. Human activity will do nothing to change what climate does. Elimination of reliable, affordable energy that keeps humans alive in winter in the northern hemisphere is suicidal.

Karen Engstrom is a Mayville resident.