First of all, I would like to commend the 16-year-old Cale Crouch, who deliberated and wrote the "Other Voices" article on December 4th on the need to continue to use nuclear energy as an energy source. Maybe we still have hope. His submission made me dusty and submitted the following comments:

In October 2020, Governor Newsom issued an executive order stating that California will not sell fossil fuel vehicles after 2035. The order was later eased to reflect that California will only sell emission-free cars after 2035.

In April, the governor announced that hydraulic fracturing would be banned in California by 2024, and all oil extraction would be banned by 2045.

On May 27, the President announced that all the raw materials needed to make electric car batteries would be imported, thus avoiding new mining requirements in environmentally sensitive areas of the United States.

I think the president and governor’s comments are unwise and reflect their ignorance of the consequences of these laws. The president, governor, and the general public seem to have made a fanatical and comprehensive commitment to replace all fossil-fuel vehicles with electric vehicles. Under this concept, wind energy and solar energy will obviously be the answer to all electricity needs.

I fully support the reduction of greenhouse gases and toxic emissions, as well as the development and production of electric vehicles. The point I don’t support is that electric vehicles are the only answer, and wind and solar are the only acceptable forms of energy production.

There are more than 25 million cars and trucks in California, most of which are powered by fossil fuels. In addition to growing consumer and industrial demand, replacing them with electric vehicles will increase the electricity demand equation.

Proponents of wind and solar power claim that batteries will store the required energy. A recent article reflected that Tesla’s new battery factory in Nevada must produce 500-year-old batteries to produce enough batteries to meet the nation’s electricity needs for one day.

Other aspects of the shift to electric vehicles that have not been discussed publicly are the natural resource requirements for the production of batteries and the environmental impact of their disposal. An electric car battery weighs about 1,000 pounds. The production of batteries requires natural resources such as lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt, copper, aluminum, steel, not to mention petroleum-based plastics.

In order to meet the demand for batteries, large-scale new mining operations are required to mine, transport, and process the natural resources needed to manufacture batteries and vehicles themselves. The plan to rely on the president to import needed materials will make the country dependent on foreign resources (remember OPEC in the early 1970s). The recycling and disposal of millions of 1,000-pound batteries has not yet been resolved, nor has the infrastructure investment for charging 300 million electric vehicles, not to mention the modifications that each household needs to adapt to charging.

The environmental impact of windmills and solar panels is easily ignored by wind/solar fanatics. Solar panels require silicate to produce the silicon used in the panels. To produce sufficiently pure silicon for the panel, it needs to be treated with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride and other high-risk environmentally hazardous chemicals. The carbon fiber blades of a windmill can weigh more than 80,000 pounds and must be replaced every 15 to 20 years, and as far as I know, there is no public recycling program.

Other energy options must be explored, developed and produced. For example, hydrogen-powered cars have been driving on California roads since the early 2000s. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Hydrogen fuel can be produced in a variety of reasonable, efficient and cost-effective ways, including the thermochemical treatment of natural gas, and even the use of electrolysis or solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Although they have a greater range than electric vehicles and are easier and faster to refuel, the number of hydrogen-powered vehicles in California is still very small due to the lack of political support and the small number of gas stations. A recent car and driver article reflects that General Motors is exploring the introduction of hydrogen battery transport vehicles. More research and development of this type is needed.

There is nothing wrong with taking strong measures to reduce emissions and greenhouse gases. There is nothing wrong with supporting electric vehicles. What is wrong is the absolute and complete promise of solar and wind energy and electric vehicles as the only answer.

What we need is a more balanced strategy. Why don't we explore other energy options? Hydrogen and natural gas are clean and usable energy sources. Millions or even billions of gallons of natural gas are burned in oil wells each year. These natural gas can be controlled and stored to provide fuel or produce hydrogen for power plants that produce clean energy.

Nuclear power has been completely abandoned, but it is still a zero-emission energy source. If it is constructed and operated normally, it is completely safe. Current hydropower is underutilized, and new zero-emission power plants can help alleviate the shortage.

And why don’t we consider filtering and cleaning emissions from existing coal, oil, and natural gas power plants? Reasonable people need to stand up and demand a more balanced approach to meet transportation and energy needs.

Greg Marshall lives in Pennsylvania Valley.

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Critical race theory is a complex method of race and race relations taught in law courses. After years of anti-bias work, I have only recently heard of it.

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