Strong market incentives to change behavior are best solution to climate change

President Joe Biden met with officials in the Chicago area this week to discuss, among other things, clean energy and infrastructure investment.

Although clean energy and infrastructure such as charging stations for electric cars are important, measures such as these won’t solve the urgent problem of climate change, not even if done nationwide.

Carbon pricing is the most efficient way to allocate resources for this purpose. The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, now pending in the House, and the Save our Future Act, sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois in the Senate, are carbon pricing proposals that would let the market pick the most efficient and appropriate clean energy solutions. They would impose an additional fee on carbon where it’s extracted from the ground, and then return those fees as checks to the American people on a regular schedule.

The solution to climate change is to create market incentives for change. President Biden, please speak out in support of carbon pricing bills.

Michael Holler, Montclare

Kadner’s clever aliens

Kudos to Phil Kadner for his column about UFO’s. He speculates that aliens are watching Earthlings purely for the entertainment value. If so, they’re getting their extraterrestrial money’s worth!

Kadner imagines viewers of reality TV on other distant planets following life here on Earth in amazement as we manage to destroy ourselves. Why would these alien beings reveal themselves and lose all that entertainment value?

Such a fresh take on UFO’s is welcome in our tortured and divided world. We all need to take a fresh look at human activity and get over ourselves. We need to think about what’s really going on and what will happen if we don’t change our ways.

Karen Wagner, Rolling Meadows