Support clean car bill

To the Editor:

Illinois has more than nine million vehicles on its roads, and there is proposed legislation that can reduce the impact of these vehicles on our health and environment. The Illinois Clean Car Act (HB 3424 and SB 2238) would give Illinois the authority to require automakers to reduce tailpipe pollution by using "clean" technology in new cars, trucks and SUVs. The cleaner technology is available in your choice of vehicle, with an actual cost per vehicle of only a few hundred dollars. You would recover your cost plus a bonus in gasoline savings.

Carbon dioxide, which causes global warming by trapping heat in our atmosphere, is produced when gasoline burns. By curbing carbon dioxide emissions, the act would alleviate the rising temperatures, extreme weather and negative effects on our agricultural industry associated with global warming. Specifically, the act would mandate a 23 percent reduction in global warming pollution from all passenger vehicles beginning in model year 2012.

The required reduction would rise to 30 percent by 2016. Thirteen other states have already enacted similar standards, which would result in an 18 percent reduction of greenhouse gases by 2020 and 27 percent by 2030. The act would also improve our health by reducing pollutants linked to respiratory illnesses. Cleaner air would lead to better health for all of us, particularly for the more than 600,000 asthma sufferers in Illinois. Given the significant health and environmental benefits that the act would bring to Illinois, it is critical that we all support its passage.

Barbara McKasson

Makanda

View on bags called 'hogwash'

To the Editor:

The "Another View" column in The Southern Illinoisan on April 22 addressed whether plastic bags are any worse than paper bags in terms of environmental damage. The clever article is designed entirely to mislead the reader. It asserts that plastic bags are a convenient and economically viable option to paper bags and implies that any dispute about the two in terms of pollution is merely trifling with words and ideas.

Hogwash! The author is connected with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a D.C. advocacy group that denies that climate change has anything to do with human behavior. It is also opposed to any government regulation regarding the environment, preferring to leave everything up to the so-called free (read: profit-driven) market, even emission controls on automobiles. I love the smell of exhaust fumes in the morning, don't you?

The truth is that plastic bags litter and blight our highways, parks and waterways. Unlike paper products, plastic bags can last hundreds of years without a scintilla of decomposition and that only 2 percent of plastic bags are recycled. And they're deadly. According to the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation, more than a million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die every year from eating or getting entangled in plastic. Are these bags really energy efficient, as the article claims? Hardly. Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags. This is the equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil. Great if one owns an oil company but not if one owns a conscience.

Stuart Fischoff

Carbondale