MB Civic

To the Editor:

Re “Turned Off by Global Warming” (Op-Ed, May 20):

While Katherine Ellison, a mother of two young boys concerned for their future, advocates for personal virtues like energy conservation, she suggests that a lack of leadership from both politicians and some environmental advocacy groups is the main setback for global climate-change solutions. Let’s take her point further.

In a closely split Congress, just a few independent green senators and representatives could change the focus of our misguided energy policy, from low-efficiency, gasoline-based hybrid cars and corn-based ethanol fuels to more substantive changes like energy conservation and the development and the promotion of multiple forms of solar energy.

If we are serious about such solutions, and ultimately the survival of our species, then we have to decide where we spend our political dollars and sense.

Howard Drossman
Falmouth, Mass., May 20, 2006
The writer is director of the Environmental Science Program at Colorado College.

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To the Editor:

Katherine Ellison asks for radical realism to counter global warming.

I never boarded a school bus in my life. So send elementary school children to school by bus. Require all others, including university campuses, to have bikes and helmets for this healthy exercise.

Redesign all streets with snow-plowable bike paths for safe use for all of us. Give bus drivers jobs as “bike cops.” Recycle the buses. Radical enough for a start?

Mary Blewett
Lowell, Mass., May 20, 2006

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To the Editor:

I know it’s naïve, but I couldn’t help thinking that the logical conclusion of Katherine Ellison’s article isn’t her submitting to the lack of leadership on global warming but her inspiring a concerted effort among mothers to do more than buy fluorescent light bulbs.

With their children’s and grandchildren’s futures at stake, they could, starting tomorrow, build a culture of conservation, lower their thermostats, get rid of their S.U.V.’s, teach their kids restraint in energy use, and force companies, through sheer economic power, to confront the degradation of our planet.

What greater expression of maternal concern could there be?

If we can vote with our dollars, surely we can take a stab at saving ourselves with them. Perhaps even men would follow.

Charles T. Clark
Stonington, Conn., May 20, 2006

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To the Editor:

Katherine Ellison is indignant about the ineffectiveness of the political establishment in mitigating global warming. But her endorsement of the Clean Energy Transition, with its narrow emphasis upon currently deployable renewable technologies, is also equally ineffective, because these technologies are now too small in output or too localized, and are often not competitive in today’s energy markets without subsidy.

The Clean Energy Transition agenda is a positive step, but it seriously underestimates the scale and types of changes needed.

In our energy course at M.I.T, we teach that an effective attack upon global warming requires the use of a large portfolio that includes all of the available non-carbon-emitting energy supply technologies, like the two that are now available at industrial strength: nuclear and hydro power.

This portfolio also includes making large improvements in energy efficiency over all, plus progress toward increasing other renewables, like wind, biomass and geothermal.

Attacking global climate change is a tough problem, made needlessly difficult by the current, almost exclusive reliance upon market mechanisms to achieve change and by the rigid refusal of some in the green lobby to seek realistic solutions.

Elisabeth Drake
Michael Golay
Jefferson Tester
Cambridge, Mass., May 21, 2006

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To the Editor:

Katherine Ellison is right in saying we are living through an extraordinary failure to respond to the danger of human-caused global warming, which every year is less looming and more actually upon us.

The grip of torpor, denial and inertia is worldwide, but is strongest of all in the United States.

We who boast of our social flexibility and technological prowess, and who possess in renewable and nuclear power highly capable technical instruments to replace fossil energy, now find ourselves tied in knots, thinking, at best, of half-measures.

The Bush administration is obviously a problem, but the failure is deeper and broader.

As succeeding generations struggle worldwide with an altered and de-stabilized climate, history will judge us very harshly.

Peter Lydon
Berkeley, Calif., May 21, 2006

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To the Editor:

Buying an energy-efficient light bulb or driving a hybrid car won’t solve our climate problems. But these actions, done collectively, can be part of a team effort that allows Americans to be part of the solution.

Katherine Ellison, instead of criticizing Al Gore and Environmental Defense for not being daring enough, would be wise to consider what place their actions hold in the overall climate change movement.

Mr. Gore, by creating a space for global warming in popular culture, has generated an environment in which people like the journalist Ross Gelbspan can successfully initiate the bold ideas essential to stopping global warming.

Cloe Axelson
Cambridge, Mass., May 21, 2006

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To the Editor:

Viewing the evidence for climate change, Katherine Ellison wants to do more than buy compact fluorescent bulbs. Me, too.

While the swing-for-the-fences Clean Energy Transition sounds great, what can we do to begin to fill the leadership vacuum she names?

We can operate most buildings with 5 to 10 percent less energy with no reduction in services and no big capital investment.

What if we got every school to engage kids as energy detectives who identify wasted energy? This idea works in old urban school buildings and newer buildings, too.

After tuning up their own buildings, the best detectives can help local libraries, police stations and government offices start saving.

We may be able to buy ourselves a little time until a megaproposal takes root and green technology becomes commonplace, with the added benefit that kids get hands-on experience using energy more intelligently, right now.

Kevin Little
Madison, Wis., May 21, 2006
The writer is the founder of Informing Ecological Design, which helps designers improve the ecological integrity of their designs.