Letters: Clean energy is in the crosshairs of this administration

Chicago Tribune

6 hours ago

The MAGA Republican Congress is in the midst of passing the most cruel and extreme budget cuts in our history. While health care and food assistance command the most attention, the craven assault on clean energy cannot be minimized.
Big Oil's decades of misinformation, lobbying and massive political donations are paying off in spades. The fossil fuel industry is actually writing state laws promoting natural gas as 'green energy' — New Louisiana law rebrands natural gas as green energy, for example — while the industry receive hundreds of billions in government subsidies every year. That money alone could restore most of the Medicaid cuts.
We have a president who eschews science that is staring him in the face. Yet, in his zeal to crush clean energy at Big Oil's bidding, he banned offshore wind from day one and, astoundingly, promotes tax cuts for coal production!
Trump declares fictitious 'national emergencies' in pursuit of his agenda, while true crises like our worsening climate are being exacerbated in search of short-term monetary gain.
The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency has been turned on its head, alarming hundreds of agency scientists — 170-plus EPA staffers have signed a declaration of dissent.
I pray the good people who've committed their lives to actually working for the public good can hang on until we can restore sanity and probity in our government.I never thought I would agree with Elon Musk after he single-handedly demolished much of the infrastructure of the federal government, crippling American progress for decades. But the bloated funding bill the GOP is trying to ram down the throats of unsuspecting Americans is a travesty beyond all comprehension. The Republicans' 'fiscal responsibility' pretense for slashing myriad programs that benefit all Americans, especially those who are not billionaires, is belied by the addition of $3.3 trillion to the national debt. All to provide tax cuts for billionaires.
If you imagine that your family will receive thousands of dollars in tax cuts, you are dreaming!
The goals of this monstrosity are viciously anti-American. About 12 million Americans would lose their health insurance. It would cut support for green energy (incentives for installing efficient heat pumps or electric cars), but subsidize the failing coal and petroleum industries.
As Musk points out, instead of investing in high-paying jobs in booming new industries, it impedes progress and pushes us into the past. Would you invest in coal mines? Or the energy sources of the future, such as wind, solar, hydrogen, etc.? China will cheer as we remove ourselves from global competition in technological progress.
Cutting the National Institutes of Health budget by 40% sabotages American health science research. Do Americans prefer their doctors to study actual medicine or would they rather rely on healing by people like Robert F. Kennedy?
Are the Republicans voting for this horror really so ignorant that they believe mortgaging the future to give trillions to billionaires will improve this country? Do they think we want them to destroy our health care system, pave over our national parks, pollute the air and water, let impoverished and disabled Americans die in the gutter, cut Medicare and Medicaid, allow poisons in our food, take away our hard-earned Social Security benefits and give our money to the richest people on the planet?
A few of them really are that stupid. But the vast majority are cynical and greedy and scared of losing their jobs. They do not believe the vulgar lies being used to plaster over this monstrosity, but they think enough Americans are stupid enough that they will get away with it.The bill isn't beautiful. As Jesus said: 'Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'
Balancing tax breaks for the wealthy on the backs of the poor is not beautiful. It goes against the core tenets of Judeo-Christian tradition. Shame.It is with a heavy heart that I read the news of James Ryan's resignation from his post as the president of the University of Virginia after pressure from the federal administration. While I cannot fully know the pressure he has been under, I am profoundly sorry that he did not hold out on behalf of the principled policies he has supported in the past.
Having to fire Ryan would have put the university's board members on the line to show exactly what they are willing to do to further the authoritarian aims of our current federal administration.
Our country and institutions of higher education need the kind of leadership for which Ryan was known. I admired his efforts on behalf of women, students of color and those from diverse gender, ethnic and national backgrounds.The wire story 'Families recall life without vaccines' (July 1) made me think back to growing up in the late 1930s without vaccines. My sister traded me her whooping cough for my chickenpox. We had about five weeks of illness, with my poor parents trying to nurse us and comfort us.
Jerry who sat in front of me in fifth grade got polio. He survived with no ill effects but scared a lot of people.
My children were vaccinated; they got the sugar cube polio vaccine. My grandchildren were vaccinated. None of them got these childhood diseases, which is proof that vaccinations work.When my husband was diagnosed with cancer at just 30 years old, we were devastated. The little information we knew about leukemia, let alone his specific subtype, was that the outlook was bleak, with limited treatment options for adults and low survival rates.
Fortunately for us, our information was outdated. His oncology team at the University of Chicago told us that in the 15 years prior to his diagnosis, research had moved forward by leaps and bounds, and he actually had a pretty good shot of surviving the cancer.
Three years later, my husband is still kicking and just a few months away from completing his maintenance chemotherapy regimen. Since his diagnosis, we've gotten married, gotten a dog (a mini-schnauzer named Basil — she is adorable) and enjoyed priceless time with each other, friends and family. My husband would not be alive today if it weren't for research funding, plain and simple.
So when I hear that Congress is considering massive cuts to federal research funding, I know on a personal level how devastating these cuts would be.
There's no way around the truth that if these cuts go through Congress, patients will lose their lives, and families will lose their loved ones.
I know my congressman, Bill Foster, has long been a champion for cancer research funding, both from his perspective as a scientist and as someone who has seen a loved one face cancer. I desperately hope he can work to convince more of his colleagues in Congress to support lifesaving research.