Electrical grid: Ensure energy security
Re: “Taking charge of the grid” (July 12, Opinion):
One winter in 1963, before my father left for a weekslong construction job, he handed me an ax, pointed at the woodpile and said, “Keep the stove burning.” Energy stored in dead trees and my skinny shoulders kept us warm.
Now we just turn up the thermostat, and the lights always work. But energy security is uncertain. Solar panels and battery-electric storage, either portable systems or grid-scale installations, can ensure our energy security for the future. Naysayers must offer a feasible alternative, not just say “no Battery Energy Storage System.” The “Not in My Backyard” movement is powerful but won’t make electricity.
We must find literal common ground in communities for clean BESS or rapidly adopt vehicle-to-home electric vehicles that return home energy overnight or sell it to the grid for use by others during the blackouts that are sure to come.
Breck Lebegue, MD, MPH, Steilacoom, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility
Microsoft: Corporate responsibility
Re: “In the AI race, Microsoft’s emissions jump” (July 9, Climate Lab):
I was saddened to read that Microsoft’s carbon emissions are now going up instead of going down. The fact that Microsoft is willing to put its carbon emission reduction goals at risk shows that we need to price carbon rather than just rely on companies setting carbon reduction goals for themselves.
We need to force companies to factor the cost of polluting our planet into their costs of creating their products and services. We cannot just rely on their good intentions and hope for the best. Call or email your representatives in Congress and ask for carbon pricing today!
Toby Mayer, Bellevue
Microsoft: Global impacts
Re: “In the AI race, Microsoft’s emissions jump” (July 9, Climate Lab):
As Al continues to reshape the global economy, it’s reshaping corporate commitments to emissions reductions, too. Ignoring its previous pledge to become carbon-neutral by 2030, Microsoft has scaled back its ambitions in the wake of the Al boom.
Microsoft has created new initiatives to add new clean power and use low-carbon concrete, but Asia, parts of Europe, the Middle East and Africa have seen Microsoft fail to use clean energy at their sites, effectively reshuffling their emissions to foreign countries.
Our local tech giant bears responsibility for its global impacts. Let’s continue to let it know its growth can’t come at the cost of our future.
Tyler Blumenthal, Mercer Island
Jones Act waiver: Endangering our nation’s interests
Re: “End Jones Act waivers that rock U.S. shipbuilding” (June 17, Opinion):
We agree with the editorial board that requiring domestic cargo to be transported on vessels built, owned and crewed by U.S. citizens is important to our nation’s security, enabling over 650,000 American jobs and a fleet of 45,000 vessels generating over $150 billion annually. One-hundred-and-five countries covering 85% of the world’s coastlines have similar laws.
New data confirms the administration’s waiver of these requirements endangers our nation’s interests:
• Vessels built, owned and crewed by U.S. citizens have been available to sail almost 90% of the waiver voyages made by foreign ships.
• The waiver has had no impact on gas prices. Maritime transport costs account for less than one penny per gallon of gas.
• The waiver endangers billions in U.S. investment while allowing foreign vessels paying crews a fraction of U.S. wages to ignore U.S. regulations.
• Twenty-nine percent of waiver voyages have been on vessels affiliated with China, which the administration has determined is illegally dominating global maritime.
During the pandemic, U.S. ships moved domestic freight without cost increases or delays while the cost of moving imports from Asia to Los Angeles increased tenfold and were delayed by months.
Our country needs the reliability the U.S. merchant marine provides.
Mark Tabbutt, chairman, and Jason Childs, president and CEO, Saltchuk Marine, Seattle; Nathan Hough, president, Foss Maritime, Seattle; and Bill Crawford, president, TOTE Maritime Alaska, Tacoma
Immigration Court: ‘Coldness and cruelty’
Where is the consistency and humanity in our legal/court systems?
On the one hand, the man accused of killing University of Washington student Juniper Blessing is judged not mentally competent to stand trial (“Man accused in killing of UW student Juniper Blessing found not competent,” June 29, Local News). He will receive mental health treatment until found competent.
But at the same time in immigration courts, hundreds of children, some only 6 years old, are expected to appear at mass deportation hearings (“Seattle Immigration Court starts ‘mega’ hearings, ‘welfare checks’ for kids,” July 8, Local News). Hillary Larsen, managing attorney with Kids in Need of Defense, told KUOW, “Having mega masters where there are a lot of children, many that are unrepresented, and then expecting them to have counsel in a matter of weeks for a second hearing is nearly impossible.”
Some of these kids are not even able to speak English, let alone know what to say or be brave enough to defend themselves in such an intimidating situation.
The quick and perfunctory trials reveal the coldness and cruelty of the immigration court.
These kangaroo courts must be abolished and their perpetrators must be held accountable.
Henry Noble, Seattle
America’s priorities: ‘Out of whack’
Re: “Seahawks to be sold for record $9.6B” and “Cuts loom for kindergarten ‘game changer’ ” (July 12, A1) and “UW’s sports and academics both had deficits. Guess which one got a bailout” (July 12, Northwest):
America is out of sync right now, and getting worse. Future generations will look back on this time and will not have to look further than the link between three articles in Sunday’s paper to figure out why.
Twenty-one percent of American adults are functionally illiterate. Fifty-four percent of American adults read below a sixth-grade level.
There is enough money for a group to come up with $9.6 billion for a football team. Another article talks about the lack of funding for a great program for our youth. Throw on top of those two articles Danny Westneat’s column on the funding of the English program at the University of Washington and the football coach getting paid $5.89 million.
How is America going to be even close to competitive with China, etc., when America’s priorities are so out of whack?
The UW football quarterback is making how much this year?
Connect the articles and draw your own conclusions.
Bill Pharr, Seattle
Elections: Beware groupthink
Re: “Supreme Court ruling gives a reprieve to states with grace periods for receiving mail ballots” (June 29, Nation) and “Platner formally withdraws from Maine Senate race and Democrats announce process to name new nominee” (July 10, Nation):
Prior to being elected as Washington secretary of state, Steve Hobbs was often called a moderate or Democrat in Name Only by some Democrats in the state Senate. They said he wasn’t progressive enough. But he’s always been a Democrat when it matters and, wow, was he the absolute right choice to safeguard Washingtonians’ voter data, uphold our state’s jurisdiction of elections and push back against the Trump administration’s threats.
Hobbs is not just delivering platitudes about resistance. Instead, he is doing the work in the trenches, and as a result he is now directly centered in the Trump administration’s crosshairs being threatened with criminal prosecution. As a former service member and Army National Guard reservist, he is putting his own career on the line, fulfilling his sworn duty to protect Americans not from bullets but from a more existential threat.
In Maine, Graham Platner, the “progressive” hero du jour, revealed a closet full of skeletons, white supremacist tattoos, infidelity and a sexual assault accusation, and had to withdraw his candidacy.
Groupthink is dangerous. Maybe it’s time we start looking critically at track records and vetting candidates instead of relying on litmus tests such as whether a candidate is “exciting.”
Tara Almond, Burlington
Elections: Confusion over ‘socialist’
Re: “Trump and Republicans return to communist attacks against Democrats ahead of the midterm elections” (July 2, Nation):
At a speech at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota on July 1, President Donald Trump inserted the seeming non-sequitur notion of communism as “the biggest threat to our country.”
Most Americans have a knee-jerk reaction that equates socialism with communism, especially when they remember Russia’s former name: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. President Trump played on this “specter of communism” (Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto,” 1848) to arouse fear of the Democratic Socialists of America and their political inroads in New York and elsewhere.
Many Americans are even suspicious of the Scandinavian model of social democracy that works within existing political economies to balance markets and social policies, as opposed to some of the more radical manifestations of democratic socialism, which strives toward collective control of economic policy.
I would much prefer to vote for a social democrat than a democratic socialist if only to deprive Trump of misrepresenting as communist the proven positives of the Nordic model of social democracy — and to avoid the confusion over “socialist” in the name and platform.
James Stark, Seattle
