The Sun (Lowell)

Stopping pipeline is both good politics and policy

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In his piece, “Biden’s attack on the Keystone XL pipeline is politics, not policy”, Steve Milloy attacks Biden on revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline as bad policy, because it will reduce GHG by an insignific­ant amount. By his calculatio­ns the yearly GHG emissions of 59.1 billion tons will only be increased by .03%. So, it’s just a little drop in the bucket. But somehow all those drops have added up to 59.1 billion tons a year. That number is huge and must come down.

We must stop the emissions now. Claiming the oil is going to be produced anyway, so we should build the pipeline and reap its benefits is elementary school logic. Spewing out 18.7 million tons of carbon dioxide into an atmosphere that already has more than the climate can handle is not a benefit. Many people living along the 1,700 miles the pipeline will traverse will have to live with the damage done to the environmen­t years after the jobs and influx of money go away. Instead of using jobs and taxes as an excuse for continuing the damage to our environmen­t and climate, the same effort can be put into projects that transition us off of fossil fuels onto truly beneficial renewables. Keeping campaign promises is good politics; phasing out fossil fuels is good policy.

— Tom Amiro

Chelmsford

Social Injustice

Attorney General Maura Healey settled a case with a car dealership over fraud of unemployme­nt benefits. This is statement she made: “Colonial Automotive planned and carried out an illegal scheme to cheat our unemployme­nt system and avoid paying its workers in order to maximize its profits during the COVID-19 crisis.”

In the settlement, the dealership is to pay $1 million dollars so hide their fraudulent behavior. Wow, I guess if you have money you can buy anything and there is no accountabi­lity. Imagine if this was some little shop owner or little guy who engaged in this fraudulent activity, certainly they would be going to jail. This is certainly a double standard by the state’s attorney general.

“Nations were ruined before because they treated their wealthy different than the poor,” said the Prophet of Islam who preached absolute justice.

It is the state attorney general’s responsibi­lity to treat and pursue each case with absolute justice.

— Masood Ashraf

Fitchburg

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