Regarding the Feb. 23 editorial about oil train safety, “We’ve been warned, repeatedly”: This is America; we are capitalists. We don’t want oil trains in our cities. So let’s reduce demand for oil and spur investment in alternatives.
Every car manufacturer is now producing or planning electric vehicles. Even in Seattle, solar roof panels charge cars, and batteries store daytime energy for nights. The technology is available, but gasoline powered cars seem cheaper. Not really.
Taxpayers have been helping the oil industry stay strong and profitable for a century. We pay to build highways, for safety monitoring, and to clean up spills. We paid trillions for military protection of foreign shipments and protection of foreign oil fields. An oil lobbyist pleaded in a 2013 congressional hearing that they could produce only two-thirds as much oil from Bakkan fields without government tax breaks.
Government subsidies for an industry that already holds 95 percent of the transportation energy market keeps the free market from giving consumers choices that will bring down prices.
If the real costs of using oil were included in oil’s price, we would see that electric vehicles, transit, batteries and clean solar and wind energy are cheaper.
Conservative and liberal economists recommend a national, gradually increasing carbon fee on oil and other fossil fuel corporations with all revenue sent back to households. They say that this would increase consumer choice, unleash business innovation, create millions of jobs, raise the GDP and save thousands of lives, maybe ours.
Louise Stonington
Seattle
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