Talk Back

Readers respond to Work & Money and Business section coverage

U.S. airports treat foreigners rudely

Regarding the Savvy Consumer column, "In China, customer is always right" (Work&Money, June 15): My husband, John, and I recently returned from a trip to Europe with the UNC women's basketball team. Everywhere we went, we were treated courteously, and in countries where we didn't speak the language, people were most gracious about helping us. Our group of 60 was late getting to the airport in Munich for the return trip to the U.S.; rather than chastising us, the airline staff sprang to our aid. Additional check-in stations were opened, we were assisted through the check-in procedure, and at every step from check-in through boarding there was someone to help us along. This was done for all passengers.

What a difference when we landed at Dulles. Chaos. It seemed to come as a complete surprise to the staff at Dulles that several flights landed at about the same time (I say this because rather than helping passengers, the limited staff that were available were complaining to one another). How hard would it be for someone to check the flight schedules and respond with sufficient staffing?

Most concerning, however, was the way that foreign passengers were treated. No one was there to assist them getting their bags from the carousel (which one?) and proceeding through customs (it was so crowded no one could tell which line was for what), and the staff response to them not speaking English was to talk at them more loudly and make impatient gestures. Several students in our party commented that they were embarrassed by the treatment of the foreign visitors, especially in light of how we had been treated in their countries. While this might have been a good sensitivity training exercise for all of us, it would have been much better if our foreign guests had been greeted graciously and given help. Lest you ask, "Why didn't those in your group help?" we tried as best we could, but we were having a tough time ourselves.

I wish I could say that the Dulles experience was unique. Unfortunately, John and I have found chaos and rough treatment of foreign visitors to be the case in most U.S. airports.

Barbara Holland Chapman

Chapel Hill

Raise renewable energy requirements

I agree that the mandates for North Carolina electricity generating companies to produce power from renewables and reduce consumption through deploying energy efficiency technologies are too low ("Critics: Energy goal too low," Business, June 24). However, it is fair to consider these mandates as minimum requirements. It has been the experience in other states with similar renewable energy mandates that after a couple of years during which renewable energy power generation increased at a faster rate than predicted, the mandates were increased. The same could happen here.

Furthermore, there is good evidence that Duke Energy and Progress Energy are serious about developing the necessary programs required by our new law. Duke Energy has recently announced a program to deploy solar systems on the building rooftops of participating customers that the utility will own and operate. The company plans to capture federal and state solar tax credits and use their tax liabilities to buy down the costs of these systems. As far as I know, this is the first such program in the U.S. by an investor-owned utility.

An energy efficiency option that is available to the utilities is to similarly deploy metered solar hot water systems that displace electricity and which they own and operate, and then bill participating customers for the solar energy utilized each month. Again, they can capture solar tax credits, which makes this program a better investment than more costly solar PV and one that should not raise anyone's electric rates.

I am optimistic that our electric utilities will find that investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency will better serve the needs of its customers and mitigate climate change than by investing in costly new coal-fired and nuclear power plants.

Thomas Henkel, Sustainable Energy Consulting

Chapel Hill