Here’s a letter I just sent to my representatives and the President:

I oppose President Bush’s energy plan to reduce gasoline usage by 20% in 10 years.

A) It doesn’t do enough to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
B) It allows the Transportation Secretary to actually REDUCE fuel economy standards
C) It allows manufacturers to pay their way out of increasing fuel economy—without setting a price or even a reasonable economic model.
D) Widening roads allows for even more gas-guzzing cars to clog them—it never, EVER reduces traffic. In fact, Bush’s plan to reduce traffic congestion only widens roads for the sake of allowing more cars on to them!
E) It actually calls for pumping MORE fossil fuels out of the ground (to become pollution later)
F) It doesn’t create one single incentive for tax payers to actually invest in alternative fuels or technologies.
G) It actually provides tax incentives and encourages investment in COAL! Repeat it with me: CLEAN COAL IS NOT.

What we need is a CO2 cap & trade program that reduces the cap every year. We also need to ban construction of non-renewable power plants ASAP because the plants that are built now could very well continue to run for another 50 years. Do you think that 50 years from now ANYONE will appreciate the fact that they’ll be getting their electricity from a toxic pollution dinosaur?

Interesting fact: Coal-fired power plants emit ten times more radioactive materials into the atmosphere than nuclear power plants do—even if you include the mining and eventual storage of the materials! Why is this? Because coal contains small amounts of various radioactive materials. When you burn billions of tons of it, that amounts to tons of radioactive material!