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We must act for our world

Editor, OBSERVER:

This is in response to “Painful proposal looms at pumps” (April 19).

I certainly agree with the OBSERVER that we all need to be concerned with the state’s environmental future. That’s why I don’t understand why efforts to rein in climate-killing fossil fuel use, electrify transit and switch to renewable energy are so controversial. A good piece of legislation, the Climate and Community Investment Act, which will get polluters to fund renewable energy, is suddenly shrouded in fear, uncertainty and doubt. Change is afoot! Beware!

The idea that we’ll be required to pay an extra 55 cents per gallon at the pump is, so far as I can tell, a public relations invention by the Business Council of New York State, which sounds like a business, not a consumer group. But let’s say the law actually did require that. Could that painful proposal actually be good public policy in disguise? We need to get out of our internal combustion vehicles now and be incentivized to start driving electric, and that goes for buses and trucks as well. New York must radically expand the electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and implement its own electric fleets.

What we really need is for electric vehicles to be the norm, and not that 14-gallon vehicle, minivan or truck. As well, dirty, fracked natural gas should not be the heating norm. It is already too expensive in its deleterious effects on our climate and environment. Air pump or geothermal heating are the alternatives.

What we can’t have is business as usual.

If we don’t make big changes ourselves, they will be made for us by our climate pushed to the brim.

JUDI LUTZ WOODS,

Certified Climate Reality Project,

Fredonia

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