Letter to the editor: Carbon neutrality unattainable

Once again, President Biden has committed the United States to be carbon neutral by 2050. Consider the following before agreeing.

The people of the United States travel approximately 1.9 trillion miles per year via gasoline-powered automobiles, consuming about 83 billion gallons of gasoline. To be carbon neutral, the climate alarmists want to power those automobiles with electricity. Doing so would require about 2.8 billion megawatt-hours of electricity above what is currently generated in the U.S. This is equivalent to about 1,300 new major generation plants to be built by 2050. Alternately you could build about 390,000 wind turbines. Since 2010, the United States has added only 30, 600-megawatt generation plants to the grid. That’s three per year.

Unless we the people are willing to forego the environmental and siting regulations currently in place and permit plant owners to recover their costs at a huge increase in the cost of electricity, the prospect of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 is zero. Once again, the climate alarmists are using the clarion call of a pending catastrophe to persuade you to demand something that is not attainable, not necessary and will not accomplish carbon neutrality.

Karl Pfirrmann

Greensburg