March 9 Letters to the Editor: Our Readers’ Opinions

Workers left behind

In 1984 when Walter Mondale ran for president, the United Paper Workers Union supported him even though he said he would end logging on federal lands. That would have effectively shut down all pulp mills in the United States.

The United Steel Workers supported President Joe Biden, who said he would shut down construction of the pipelines.

Then they were shocked when he did, laying off thousands of union workers.

It might be time for all working Americans to take another look at who they support. The Democratic Party has not helped working class people for a long time.

If you doubt that, look at who supports them — Wall Street and billionaires.

Warren Buffett contributed heavily to Biden. And in return, Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline.

Buffett’s railroad system hauls the crude oil from Canada to U.S. refineries.

Biden said it was to help the environment, but we are not going to use less fossil fuels because of his actions. Stopping oil and gas exploration on federal lands only helps Russia, China and the Middle Eastern countries while hurting American workers.

Rejoining the Paris Climate Accord does nothing for the environment but again hurts American workers while helping China.

America has to meet strict reductions in carbon emissions and China, the world’s largest polluter, does not for 30 years.

If we really wanted to do something for the environment, we would not let products be imported into our country from a country that does not meet our environmental standards.

Dan Long

Clarkston

What Hassoldt missed

In his Feb. 28 column, Bob Hassoldt forgot to tell us that wind energy producers are working diligently to mitigate the deaths of bats around their sites.

New software has been designed to detect bat activity in the rotor swept area, and it automatically shuts down the affected wind turbines.

Bats rarely fly in high winds, so threshold rotor speed in Pennsylvania was increased from 4 to 5.5 meters per second. This reduced bat mortality by 93 percent. Turbine operators elsewhere in the U.S. and Europe are also finding this a successful strategy.

Scientists working with Bat Conservation International have developed “a bat deterrent system that jams bats’ echolocation capabilities with ultrasound.” Testing during two years has reduced bat mortality by 54 percent. Much better results were found for Brazilian free-tailed bats and hoary bats, the latter suffering half the deaths from wind turbines.

In New South Wales, more than 30,000 flying foxes have died because of Australia’s extreme heat waves, so climate change will have much more devastating effects on bat populations than wind turbines.

Bat migrations have been disrupted and scientists fear that they will be out of sync for their essential pollination duties. Insect populations are also steadily declining and that will obviously affect all insectivorous species.

Fossil fuels are the main contributor to climate change, and it is imperative that we replace carbon-based energy with wind turbines and solar panels. The future of the planet is in our hands.

Nick Gier

Moscow