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What tariff means

I’m responding to Glenda Heyde letter on February 10th criticizing the 30 percent tariff on solar panel components. Her main point is that this tariff proves that the congressmen don’t care about the planet.

She wrote that we lost the race to manufacture this new tech. In reality, the tariff is intended to improve the competitiveness of American manufacturer’s who must pay an ever increasing minimum wage, provide safe work environments, and comply with environmental regulations for their manufacturing.

Is she OK with the idea that the foreign manufacturer’s don’t have to comply with these requirements and are destroying clean air and water in places far away from her back yard?

It’s a fallacy to think that foreign manufacturer’s don’t care about profit like American companies do. Domestic manufacturer’s will step up and produce these components if they can compete.

In economics, tariffs are intended to correct imbalances that exist when other countries don’t play by the same rules.

Of course this all means that solar energy will become more expensive. Living responsibly has a cost.

Solar panels are terribly inefficient. It’s a fallacy to think that we can maintain our extravagant standard of living using diffuse solar power instead of the concentrated energy available in fossil fuels.

That’s another part of the cost.

It’s disingenuous to blame the legislators for representing the needs and wants of the people who elected them. The green energy movement will be successful only if they are able to change the minds of the general population.

Finally, I am amused when people talk about “saving the planet.” The planet will be fine, even if all the people are dead. George Carlin made the point very well.

I think that the people who talk about saving the planet are more concerned about saving their own sense of superiority, and entitlement to the affluent, comfortable lifestyle deserved by the elite.

Edward Brown

Hughesville

Submitted by Virtual Newsroom

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