Make renewable energy competitive
Regarding “Climate change divides CEOs” (Business, June 7): European oil companies have seen the light and are asking for a price on carbon. American oil companies are unwilling to take a position. The fact is that the external price of carbon needs to be accounted for. The cost of the excess carbon emissions will be borne by all of us, but disproportionately by the poor who will not have the means to adapt.
Imposing a fee on carbon at its source and distributing the dividends to all American households is the simplest and most efficient way to put a price on carbon. At the same time, this will make renewable energy more competitive and drive its development. Finally it will stimulate the economy with the additional spending power of the dividends.
Vivian Barron, Piedmont
Cleaning streets
Carl Nolte’s “S.F. just doesn’t measure up to real big cities” (May 31) is sad but true. The city has a policy that it is responsible for the street cleaning and residents and property owners are responsible for cleaning sidewalks, entryways and stairs.
This makes sense in residential areas, but it does not make sense in crowded urban areas. The city needs to officially take over the cleaning of the sidewalks and entryways. Nolte mentioned Manhattan and London. In Paris, they have very cool motorized, mobile cleaning units. They look like big green tricycles. Two people operate them wearing protective coveralls and gloves: one sweeps and picks up trash by hand that goes into to a trash can on the unit and the second comes afterward and hoses off the area. We should get 100 Parisian green mobile cleaning units and a dedicated cleaning crew and put them to work cleaning up our downtown sidewalks on a daily basis. Why shouldn’t San Francisco be famous for solving this problem in an innovative, sustainable, green, hightech way, instead of famous for ignoring it?
Kari Connolly, San Francisco
End death penalty
What does the United States, a Western democracy, have in common with totalitarian dictatorships like China and North Korea? It still has the death penalty. In examining this issue, John Diaz rightly raises the question of whether some death row inmates have been wrongly convicted in “A pragmatist’s view of the death penalty” (Insight, June 7), along with long-standing concerns about the costs and efficacy of capital punishment. But at this juncture in human history, with more than 140 nations having abolished the death penalty, isn’t this issue ultimately a question of humanitarianism rather than one of pragmatism? It’s time for this country, the last G-7 country to still have a death penalty, to join its civilized brethren and put an end to this barbaric form of punishment.
Julian Grant, Pacifica
Stopping evil
Regarding “U.S. cannot intervene in more wars” (Letters, Insight, June 7): The writer misses the entire point of Jonathan Zimmerman’s “Who’s to stop monsters in our midst?” (Insight, May 31). Zimmerman presented the question that really needs to be answered if you are retreating into isolationism. Are you willing to allow the massacres by ISIS, genocide in Rwanda, slaughter in Serbia, and of course, the Holocaust that started small in Germany, when you might have the power to stop them? Zimmerman’s article is not about peace, it is about stopping evil. If you don’t want the nation’s sense of morality to lead, then whose do you want? Do they have the power and will to lead? That is the question, and lead or be led is the reality.
Robert Rissel, San Jose
New partnership
Sunday’s Insight contained opinion pieces from men closely connected to the new emerging partnership of Mexico and the Southwest of the U.S. It’s heartening to read that the promise of NAFTA is finally emerging. Starting as an attempt to create equity in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, NAFTA stumbled in its goal to raise Mexico into a trading partner, instead frightening us with its loss of low-end manufacturing jobs. The authors tell us of marvelous changes wrought by this partnership. In “Emerging Mexico” (Insight, June 7), Michael Lind writes “the continuing challenges of crime ... along the border should not obscure the outlines of a historical transformation in North America.” Time to take the long view.
Anne Spanier, Alameda
Don’t provoke
Regarding “Jeb Bush issues warning to Putin” ( June 10): When rattling a saber, Bush, don’t hold it by the pointy end.
Larry Coy, Palo Alto