Letters to the Editor: Take these climate steps to save Alaska's polar bears and California's Joshua trees

To the editor: I fully agree with David Helvarg’s concern that Alaska is both a climate victim and a perpetrator. But he did not mention two necessary actions for timely mitigation of climate change.

First, we need more nuclear power, the only non-warming energy source that can quickly meet the scale of our demand without undue habitat destruction.

Second, existing fossil fuel plants must scale back their operations and global-warming emissions as renewables scale up. Such renewables include California desert solar power, recently and surprisingly characterized as producing surplus energy.

Yes, these two steps will raise the cost of power. But will we or won’t we take the necessary actions to save our only spaceship and its precious inhabitants, whether polar bears in Alaska or Joshua trees in the California desert?

J. Philip Barnes, San Pedro

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To the editor: One has to wonder just how “green” Eland or any other solar farm truly is. (“L.A.’s massive new solar farm is cheap and impressive. More, please,” column, Dec. 5)

First is the issue of habitat destruction (even if the land in question was an alfalfa field at one time). Then there’s the question of what happens to all these wonderful solar panels and batteries once they’ve passed their life span (ditto for windmill blades).

I’m probably not alone in wishing we’d spend as much on conserving energy as creating it.

Sara Schmidhauser, Isla Vista