Letters

I don’t agree with Vivek Ramaswamy that current climate policy is a hoax. On the contrary, its misdirection is all too real. The Biden administration’s Commerce Department is adding high tariffs to Chinese solar panels in support of developing our own solar manufacturing capacity here.

On its face, it seems okay, but the U.S. will not develop our own manufacturing for three to five years. In the interim, costs for solar panels to meet the Biden clean energy goals will go up by 200 percent.

Domestically, our solar panel projects are currently heavily subsidized through the “Inflation Reduction Act” that we know does not reduce inflation but does finance green investment here. Ironically, this subsidy will end up paying for the high cost for tariffed Chinese solar panels. In the end, you, the taxpayer, are paying both for the tariff and for the higher cost of installing a solar system on your home.

Subsidies launch new tariffs that lead to more subsidies, regulations and taxes as our government gains more and more control of what companies and industries become the winners and losers.

Federal and state governments are in a race to outdo each other as they rush to impose the elimination of gas-powered cars and appliances. In California, New Jersey and other states, bans on the sale of new gas engines by 2035 to meet zero emissions mandates are opposed by almost 60 percent of Americans.

Currently, electric vehicles are not selling well and auto makers are suffering substantial loses. Ironically they are raising prices on gas-powered trucks to soften the blow, as government continues to interfere with production of these preferred vehicles, making them deliberately prohibitively expensive for you and I to own and purchase. Eventually, only used gas-powered vehicles will still be available, at higher and higher cost.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Government picking winners and losers.

Our climate is changing, and it’s no secret. We are warming, and different parts of the globe will see both benefit and hardship — but we are not faced with the end of days. The alarmists have only one voice, and it is shrill and extreme. Unfortunately, their voice has gained traction in government and their willing amplifiers in the media.

The science does not predict the doom you are being fed, and extreme climate mandates are wasteful and often contradictory in their implementation. Add politics to this emotional concoction, and stupidity is what we are left with.

Spending countless billions to no real effect while China and India continue using energy production that negates the West’s effort will waste time and resources better spent on adaptation policies that may actually accomplish some good here.

Ed Surgan

Westhampton