Letters: Ignoring an inconvenient truth; Raising an uproar

Ignoring an inconvenient truth

In a March 3 CDT opinion piece, Pennsylvania’s House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff suggests we “marginalize Russia’s global influence” by producing, selling and burning more Pennsylvania natural gas.

While ending reliance on Russian oil (currently a small percentage of U.S. imports) is a reasonable way to retaliate against Russia for its tyrannical invasion of Ukraine, Benninghoff’s op-ed takes advantage of a humanitarian crisis for political purposes.

Energy independence is crucial to our national security. Climate change poses an equally grave national security threat. According to a joint report by the U.S. intelligence community, climate disruptions exacerbate geopolitical tensions, social instability and the need for humanitarian aid around the world.

In the 25-plus years since Benninghoff took office, climate scientists have only become more certain that “human influence” is the dominant cause of our climate crisis. The scientific evidence that burning fossil fuels is the primary human activity responsible for warming is unequivocal and undeniable.

For 25 years Benninghoff has ignored that inconvenient truth.

His answer to energy independence is another short-term fix that takes us one step forward and two steps back. Continued reliance on oil and natural gas, whether produced domestically or halfway around the world, exacerbates the real and widening public health and national security threats posed by a warming planet.

While Benninghoff offers that Pennsylvania’s natural gas assets “can be combined with other clean energy initiatives,” he has done virtually nothing in 25 years to move Pennsylvania toward that clean energy future — and toward true energy independence.

Raising an uproar

In 1721, during an outbreak of smallpox, Cotton Mather’s African slave, Onesimus, told him that Africans had been inoculating themselves against it for years. Mather’s recommendation of inoculation provoked the rise of racist anti-inoculators. Like today, ignorant racist whites raised an uproar.

George Will is an educated conservative with integrity. He has derided Tucker Carlson as a “vaudevillian-as-journalist” who “never lapses into logic,” and “speaks like an arrested development adolescent.” Recently, Carlson pandered to ignorant racist whites by requesting that America’s next Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who graduated magna cum laud from Harvard, release her LSAT scores — the implication being that she was not accomplished enough to get into Harvard law school on her own merit. (Tucker graduated from lowly Trinity, failed to get into the CIA, and, on his father’s advice, took a job in journalism because “they’ll take anybody.” Moreover, successful low-class journalism requires neither intelligence nor decency to rile and entertain its clueless consumers.)

H. L. Mencken pegged the average white American correctly when he observed: “Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head, and is thrown willy-nilly into a meager and exclusive aristocracy.” Simply consider how debased that aristocracy must be to have Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson as members.

PA hospitality industry is still burning

Imagine a fire truck rushing to a whole neighborhood up in flames, rescuing half the neighborhood, then turning around to leave the rest of the houses. Senators Casey and Toomey, Pennsylvania’s hospitality industry is still burning.

In the spring of 2021, Congress passed the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, with thousands of claims coming in from businesses. This fund ran out after just three weeks.

In Pennsylvania, 3,530 lucky operators were funded in full, while a whopping 6,414 got nothing. While hospitality businesses may be open again, many are struggling to pay back years of unpaid back rent and the expenses of maintaining and operating COVID-19 safe practices to keep our staff and patrons safe.

Last week, Senators Cardin, D-MD, and Wicker, R-MS, introduced a proposal that gained significant momentum. We need Senators Casey and Toomey to join this bipartisan team and support this bill. Our industry needs complete rescue.