To the Editor:
Re “Can We Engineer Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?” (“Buying Time” series, front page, March 31):
The fact that the fossil fuel industry is seeking to rebrand the concept of geoengineering with terms that sound more palatable should tell us all we need to know about the validity of these foolish, unworkable false solutions to our climate crisis.
“Carbon capture and storage” and “direct air capture” may sound like pleasant, productive endeavors. But the truth is, they are indeed a wasteful distraction, doing more harm than good.
Recent analysis from Food & Water Watch indicates that direct air capture is both preposterously expensive and ultimately pointless. Capturing just a quarter of our country’s annual carbon dioxide emissions would cost around a trillion dollars a year — money much better spent on replacing oil and gas power with clean, renewable alternatives.
And the process of capturing the carbon is extremely energy-intensive itself. Powering a direct air capture operation via traditional methods would create over three times more carbon emissions than it actually captured. Meanwhile, diverting wind and solar energy to run carbon capture facilities would be like using clean water to power a desalination plant — a wasteful loop of stagnation.
Unfortunately, there are no fanciful, futuristic escapes from the deepening crisis we face. There is only this simple fact: In order to avoid the worst of fossil-fuel-driven climate chaos, we need to quit fossil fuels — quickly.
Wenonah Hauter
Washington
The writer is founder and executive director of Food & Water Watch.
To the Editor:
The issue is not “can we” but “we must” engineer our way out of earth’s climate crisis.
Only by being smart will we be able to dodge future global-warming-induced calamities. As a civilization, we need to understand our human limitations and use technology to mitigate and correct our mistakes and excesses.
We can use our knowledge and engineering skills to address our greenhouse gas climate crisis by judiciously using carbon capture, storage and recycling. Much has been said about carbon capture and storage; however, only scant references to recycling carbon dioxide have been made.
Currently CO₂ has limited industrial uses such as carbonating beverages, aerosol propellants and fire extinguishing. We need more widespread use of CO₂ so that industry can help absorb the existing and future generated carbon dioxide.
We need the widespread use of CO₂ as the raw material for industrial materials and fuels such as solid carbonate construction materials (cement) and carbon-neutral fuels such as methanol produced from CO₂ and green hydrogen.
Engineers can reduce the relative amount of carbon dioxide discharged into the atmosphere and can develop more ways of absorbing the carbon discharged. Together with the increasing worldwide awareness of the harmful effects of global warming, this is how we engineer ourselves out of the climate crisis.
Jose Femenia
Oakdale, N.Y.
The writer is a retired professor of marine and mechanical engineering.
The Jury Trump Wants
To the Editor:
Re “In Trump Criminal Trial, Angling for Jurors Ever So Carefully” (news article, April 11):
Usually a defendant such as Donald Trump would want to avoid jurors who see his “hush money” trial as more about sex than about falsifying business records for electoral gain.
But Mr. Trump has a way of surviving sex scandals — neither the 2016 release of the “Access Hollywood” tape nor his 2023 sexual abuse conviction have derailed him so far. So Mr. Trump may prefer jurors who dismiss the Stormy Daniels alleged affair as just that — another fling fit more for the tabloids than the courtroom.
Jeffrey Abramson
Concord, Mass.
The writer is emeritus professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of “We, the Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy.”
Rejecting Federal Money to Feed Kids
To the Editor:
Re “G.O.P. States Split on Taking Summer Food Aid” (front page, April 10):
It is almost impossible to reconcile the degree of cruelty exhibited by Republican governors who refuse federal aid to feed children from poor families over the summer. The once-Grand Old Party champions a “pro-life” position and yet is willing to allow children to go hungry over the summer.
Ten million children who suffer from food insecurity could be damaged by the Republican Party’s refusal to accept help from a Democratic administration.
Bill Gottdenker
Mountainside, N.J.
Cruelty to Chickens
To the Editor:
Re “A Cruel Way to Control Bird Flu? Poultry Giants Cull and Cash In” (front page, April 4):
As you report, millions of chickens have been brutally killed on farms across the country, and American taxpayers are picking up the tab.
The method most frequently used to “depopulate” these animals is particularly cruel: ventilation shutdown, which slowly kills animals by sealing them in hot barns and turning off the air to overheat and suffocate them, essentially cooking them alive.
Industrial agribusinesses could use less painful depopulation methods, or even reduce the risk of disease spread — to animals and to us — by raising birds in less crowded conditions. Instead, they keep choosing the cheapest, cruelest, highest-risk options because they know the government will bail them out.
The Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act would change this, shifting responsibility onto the multi-billion-dollar corporations that profit from factory farming.
The bill would require reasonable disaster planning, restrict use of the cruelest depopulation practices and ensure that when depopulation cannot be avoided, the corporations controlling the operations and maintaining inherently inhumane and high-risk systems are the ones covering costs and reimbursing their contract farmers.
The A.S.P.C.A. urges Congress to take action and pass this critical legislation to hold industrial agriculture accountable for its corner cutting so that animals, farmers and taxpayers are not ultimately paying the price.
Matt Bershadker
New York
The writer is president and C.E.O. of the A.S.P.C.A.
Creative Disagreement
To the Editor:
Re “The Value of Collaborating With Adversaries,” by Cass R. Sunstein (Opinion guest essay, April 3), about Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel economics laureate who died last month:
Professor Kahneman’s hypothesis that collaborating with your intellectual adversaries is valuable because it may help you discover a truth that you wouldn’t have uncovered without such a collaboration is a point well taken — especially if the effort is undertaken with the best of intentions, not just the total destruction of your adversary’s thesis (“angry science”).
The idea that this practice can be transferred to our politics would be valuable if there were a basis of truth that each side could debate and come to some consensus. But when one party unfortunately is pretty much fact-free and riddled in conspiracy theories it’s a futile exercise. It can be attempted, but I would not expect much in the way of results.
Carol Lawlor
North Wales, Pa.