Consider the alternatives

A letter in the current (Feb. 22) Sequim Gazette ridiculed efforts to move to alternative energy sources. The writer missed many important considerations in his diatribe.

No one expects an instant conversion to solar or wind energy with battery-powered jumbo jets. President Carter installed solar panels on the White House in the 1970s and President Reagan removed them when he took over, perhaps to show his support of the status quo.

In the intervening 50 years, the fossil fuel industry has successfully suppressed any significant effort to move gradually to alternative sources.

Even if you choose to ignore the damage that fossil fuels have caused for the past five decades, someday we will deplete our current profitable sources of fossil fuels. Then what, start from scratch?

Let’s quit hiding our heads in the sand and begin an intelligent transition to prevent further damage to our earth and an efficient movement to a cleaner world. It would create good, long-lasting jobs and might even diminish the earthquakes around Oklahoma City as a bonus.

Gerald Carpenter

Sequim

Regulation, with reason

Re: “Hypocrisy is evident” (Sequim Gazette, Feb. 22, page A-14) does not specify the “useless, job-killing federal regulations” the Trump administration seeks to nullify.

Those old enough to recall Victory gardens should know of the deplorable working conditions in the Chicago meat packing industry as illustrated in “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair.

Workers, many of them children, lost fingers, limbs and lives with no compensation for them or their families. They were an expendable commodity easily replaced.

Recall also the horror of the high-rise fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York where 146 immigrant seamstresses, many of them teenagers, perished in the fire or leaped to their deaths because the doors were locked, blocked and opened inward.

It took tragedies and public outrage for the federal government to advocate for worker safety and regulate industries whose profit margins still remain strong in spite of federal regulatory mandates.

Roger B. Huntman

Sequim