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The 2024 Chevrolet SS EV is shown in Warren, Mich., this month

The 2024 Chevrolet SS EV is shown in Warren, Mich., this month

The viewpoint by Mark Swan listing “Disadvantages of EVs” bothered me. I Googled “how much CO2 from manufacturing an ev”. The first two results both included the statistics Swan quoted about CO2. But the third Google result included a bar graph showing the life cycle CO2 emissions of an EV are roughly half of an ICE car over 150km in Europe. But that varies quite a bit by country. I really should look for results from the U.S., but I’ll leave that as an exercise for others. So we are down to dueling statistics.

The only statistic from Mr. Swan that I can directly dispute is that the expected lifespan of an EV is 80,000 miles. Maybe that includes golf carts. Google answers “how many miles does an EV last” with “around 200,000 miles.”

But shame on me, I didn’t get an EV to reduce my environmental impact. I got one to quit paying mechanics to change my oil, replace my muffler, replace my timing belt, replace my air filter and spark plugs, and tell me what else needs service. Our EV is 7 years old with 119,000 miles. It still runs like new. It’s never had an oil change. The most expensive service I’ve paid for was to replace the taillight, which was collecting rainwater. And that was not cheap.

But you’ll never need to roll up your window when you’re next to me stuck in traffic to avoid breathing my exhaust. I can sit in my car and run the AC in covered parking or even a closed garage. And if I foolishly indulge in a jackrabbit start while you’re standing near my car waiting to cross the street, there won’t be any engine noise to hurt your ears or even interrupt your conversation. Driving an EV is like having the hand of God on your rear bumper. I’ll never go back to internal combustion engines.

So, Colorado and the EPA are focusing in on ground-level ozone because Colorado has failed to reduce this greenhouse gas pollutant. Yet, the push toward electric vehicles goes on with more fervor than ever before. But, up jumps the devil!

Electric vehicles generate more ozone than do gasoline-powered vehicles, according to a 2017 study out of England Cars and ground-level ozone: how do fuels compare? | European Transport Research Review | Full Text (springeropen.com).

It appears you can’t have your cake and eat it, too, Gov. Jared Polis.

Can someone tell me how for years Colorado has done elections by electronic voting machines with no problems or inaccuracies. It seems like the voting machines that are being questioned are only because some candidates lost the election and now all of a sudden they are inaccurate.

What about all the elections that happened before when there were no in accuracies or questionable results. It just seems this is only happening because a candidate lost. It’s funny how when the candidate won a previous election, the election process and results weren’t questioned.

The climate change component of the Schumer-Manchin bill should be considered separately, and certainly should not be in a bill labeled as an inflation reduction. Climate change was supposedly the reason for the Biden executive orders to shut down the Keystone pipeline and end oil and gas leases on federal land, which immediately triggered increases in gasoline and diesel fuel costs that have been major contributors to the worst inflation in 40 years.

The last 18 months have been a clear demonstration on how energy (electricity, oil, gas) resource availability is essential for the U.S. economy to recover without this extreme inflation. Supporters of this climate change bill should be challenged to demonstrate it will not directly contribute to further inflation. Congress should be working to eliminate inflation rather than adding to it.

The U.S. is in a global economic battle with China. Because China does not have internal oil and gas resources to continue to grow, they have been aggressively external sources, and meanwhile they have been building coal-fired electric power plants. By contrast, the Biden administration has not been exploiting the vast U.S. internal sources, and has been closing coal-fired electric power plants in order to achieve an unattainable zero-emissions climate change goal. The Gazette has published a number of articles stating that the US does not presently have noncoal resources to meet that goal—although the recent Perspective article on nuclear power would help.

China would only agree to a zero-emission goal that was a decade later than the U.S. and Europe goal, which I think is because they knew that the U.S. and European nations would fail to meet their earlier goals, and thus China will not have to meet their later goal that they had no intention of meeting anyway as it would destroy their economy. Meanwhile, the U.S. and European economies will have been severely damaged, and China will dominate the global economy.

Thus, Congress must withdraw the climate change component of the Schumer-Manchin bill and create an economically sustainable climate change emissions reduction program.

Re: Stop forcing what’s not working:

Good advice until “have the courage to let your grass go fallow.” Having a lawn and garden has nothing to do with courage, all to do with education and perseverance.

Yes some gloat, that only means they have used their time to learn the ways of the earth and agriculture. Kudos! For me, my lawn and garden are my happy place. Making the time to smell freshly cut grass or flowers, growing my fresh veggies is my way of balancing my busy day with solitude.

If a neighbor brings a cool drink and we sit in silence watching the bees and hummingbirds and rabbits dart about that’s OK by me. “To each his own.”

Ryan McKibben, Chairman Christian Anschutz, Vice Chairman Chris Reen, Publisher Wayne Laugesen, Editorial Page Editor Pula Davis, Newsroom Operations Director