Pelosi’s pale green suggestion

Pelosi boasts that achieving this goal would save 60,000 lives a year. That, however, is another way of saying the Green New Deal (which sets the zero emissions date at 2030, or 20 years earlier) would save 1,200,000 more lives — or, conversely, that Pelosi’s plan would kill 1.2 million people, over 20 years.

If the coronavirus (originally projected to kill 200,000 Americans in one year) justifies shutting down industry for months, how does 60,000 deaths every year not warrant a similar and permanent response?

Though the coronavirus killed an estimated 3,500 Chinese in its initial run, the lives saved by curtailing Chinese emissions during that period was put at 11,000. COVID-19, in other words may have the net effect of saving lives, when measured against the air pollution we take for granted.

Where are our priorities? How near and immediate must death be to get our attention? 

Mark Behrend

Redwood City