Today's letters: Readers comment on climate change and sickle cell resources
Time’s running out
Once again Sens. Manchin and Sinema are “rolling coal” by laying out intertwining obstacles for a reconciliation 50-congressional-member acceptable solution climate deal. Hand in glove, Manchin wants a reduction of the federal budget deficit and Sinema refuses to increase tax rates. Manchin kowtows to coal companies and fossil fuel corporations for “bag money” while Sinema, with outstretched hand, never met a corporate lobbyist she could say no to.
When will corporations, who knowingly make deals with irresponsible congressional representatives, stop exploiting for profit, especially when it comes to legislative climate policy? It’s been said that not having a national energy and climate policy is like not having an Internet policy in the 1990s, other than a climate-collapse consequence.
Ninety-nine percent of people live in areas where air pollution exceeds safe levels, of which the majority of those unsafe levels are from road transport. America needs a productive decarbonized and electrified policy to keep up with Europe and China. If not, America will be worse off from what it could have been because climate disasters will direct budget policy and escalate and exacerbate climate-driven inflation.
The original reconciliation deal’s tax credits contribute to not only wind and solar, but all sources of zero-carbon electricity production, a win-win for tech startups due to the passage of last year's bipartisan infrastructure law. At least $11.5 billion was set aside for direct-air-capture and hydrogen projects, but building this kind of forward-moving business production needs more than a possibility of a tax credit at decades’ end.
Energy policy analysis project research has shown that by 2030, by not passing a bill at this present time, at least 25,000 more Americans will die from toxic forms of pollution such as coal ash, and fossil fuel burning from cars, factories and power plants. Less capital economic surplus and more carbon pollution will accelerate global warming and ocean acidification.
And, let’s face the facts, it’s not as if we have all the time in what’s left of a sustainable world.
Vicki Bush, Lady Lake
More resources needed
Sickle cell is the most common inherited blood disorder in the U.S. and impacts more than 8,000 Floridians. This disease causes severe complications for patients like anemia, frequent infections, blindness, kidney disease and increased risk of stroke, forcing many into a lifetime of disability. It even shortens an individual’s lifespan by two to three decades below the average American.
Thankfully, several Florida legislators have worked to take up this charge. Rep. Kamia Brown (D-Orlando) spearheaded critical legislation seeking to help improve care and treatment access for Floridians with sickle cell disease. While this legislation did not pass, leadership from Sen. Aaron Bean (R-Fernandina Beach) and the Health and Human Services Appropriations Committee helped secure a modest amount of funding to review the care that sickle cell patients in Florida receive through our state’s Medicaid program.
We recognize and thank Gov. DeSantis and the Florida Legislature for approving this funding and signing it into law.
This funding is an important first step in moving the conversation forward on sickle cell and re-evaluating how care is provided to these patients. Now, we need to use this momentum to implement policies like Brown’s proposed legislation. Groundbreaking new treatments that could potentially cure this disease are on the horizon, but this innovation will be for nothing if we do not first break down the barriers that prevent sickle cell patients from accessing treatment.
Frank Reddick, President and CEO of the Sickle Cell Association
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This article originally appeared on Daily Commercial: July 17 letters: Readers comment on climate change, sickle cell
