Most carbon waste comes from China

The Star-Advertiser needs some help in fact-checking its article on the Clean Air Act (“Legal brawl over Obama policy turns on error in Clean Air Act,” Sept. 26).

The article said the U.S. is “the world’s largest carbon polluter.” but if you take 30 seconds to Google “biggest carbon polluting nation,” you will find Wikipedia saying it’s China, which in 2014 produced double the U.S. carbon emissions and about 40 percent globally.

China’s own plan to reduce carbon emissions says it will continue to increase until at least 2030.

And India is expected to move into our No. 2 position in the near future.

So, while U.S. policy to reduce emissions is commendable, let’s not be misled into believing that we are the biggest problem globally.

Mark Torreano

Waikiki

Devise way to tax EV owners for roads

A recent letter writer correctly pointed out that transitioning to electric vehicles (EVs) can greatly reduce our dependence on gasoline and help retard the rate of global warming (“Don’t discriminate against gas vehicles,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, Sept. 25).

Life isn’t fair. EV owners don’t pay a gasoline tax — but think “incentive” rather than “discrimination.” Society should incentivize healthful choices. That’s why tobacco taxes are so high.

Though the number of EVs in Hawaii has increased more than 26 percent in the past year, at least 98 percent of the vehicles on our roadways are still fossil-fuel driven. We need to stop poisoning ourselves and our children with the toxic gasses our cars produce.

Granted, nobody should have a free ride. EV owners should pay for the roads and bridges they use. Surely, our elected representatives have the wherewithal to devise a nondiscriminatory tax to substitute for the gasoline tax currently borne by the drivers of gasoline vehicles.

Craig Stevaux

Kaneohe

Many woes linked to overpopulation

Letters to the editor keep complaining about farmlands disappearing for thousands of new homes, lots of new massive apartment towers 400 feet high, lack of space for mountains of garbage, unbearable traffic everywhere and a rail system costing billions and creating an eyesore in our beautiful city.

For an explanation to all these problems, look no further than the obituaries.

Here is an example: Mrs. “X” passed away at age 82. She had 11 children, 52 grandchildren, and on and on.

What we need most is family planning.

Leonhard H. Nicolai

Waikiki

Formby wise to bail from HART now

The top management of HART (Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation) is cleaning itself up.

First, Donald Horner, one of the worst, retired. Good riddance. Then Dan Grabauskas, the very worst, resigned — with a full year’s payoff of about $285,000. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Now the last of the chiefs, acting director Mike Formby, will leave in November. Right on.

From what little we know of him, he cannot have caused much further damage to this hideous, mismanaged and unaffordable monstrosity, misnamed rail.

He must have realized better to get out now and not waste another billion dollars of unavailable taxpayers’ money and never see that ugly bird fly. Never.

Keep up that trend and close up the entire HART. We would save ourselves money — and never-ending annoyance.

Gerhard C. Hamm

Waialae Iki

Wording of rail vote was very misleading

Everyone is saying that we voted for rail.

I decided to check the election results in the 2008 election and couldn’t find the simple question if the people of Oahu wanted rail.

I did find the question on the ballot that said, “Shall the powers, duties, and functions of the city, through its director of transportation services, include establishment of a steel wheel on steel rail transit system?”

The results was 146,764 for and 132,268 against.

The way the question was written made it sound like rail was a done deal, and the question was if we wanted to include steel-on-steel in the mass transit system.

For simple people like me, maybe the question should have been, “Do we want a mass transit system between West Oahu and Central Honolulu that will cost billions of dollars and take more than 10 years to build and will be a never-ending money pit?”

Walter Yuen

Kalama Valley

Sowell peddles myths about Iraq

I see that the Star-Advertiser has published another fact-free column by Thomas Sowell (“Trump presidency risky, but Clinton would be disastrous,” Star-Advertiser, Sept. 24).

Hillary Clinton “turned (Egypt and Libya) into countries where Islamic extremists created turmoil”?

And “(President Barack Obama and Clinton) “inherited an Iraq where terrorists had been soundly defeated”?

Give me a break.

By 2009, terrorism via al Qaida was the norm in the Middle East.

And Sowell’s statement that the pullout of American troops from Iraq against military advice was Obama’s idea, is patently false. That pullout agreement, along with its firm deadline date, was sealed by the Bush administration. The Iraqi government rebuffed Obama’s entreaty to extend it and enforced the U.S. withdrawal.

Finally, the assertion that the American pullout caused the rise of ISIS is possibly the most fact-free of everything in this piece.

ISIS arose from al Qaida, which formed from disaffected Sunnis who became enraged after being disenfranchised by President George W. Bush’s occupying forces after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

William E. Conti

Waikiki