Will Sen. Tillis really take action on climate change?

I was pleased to read “Tillis now says that man is contributing to warming” (Sept. 12) that reports Senator Tillis has apparently agreed that humans have had an impact on climate change. That is certainly a welcome change.

While this appears to be a change related to his upcoming re-election campaign for 2020, it may conflict with earlier comments about whether he would run again for Senate. He said early in his term as a senator that he would work to change the criminal justice system, also a welcome comment.

However, he seems to be at odds with Attorney General Jeff Sessions who is trying to make the criminal justice system more draconian. Tillis also said that if his work on justice was unsuccessful, he would not run for another term.

Talk is cheap, so we will have to wait to see if his comments, both on climate change and criminal justice, lead to any meaningful actions on his part. We can hope that he is becoming a bit more independent of some of President Trump’s policies that are harmful to America , but only time will tell if he now has rejected the Faustian bargain so readily accepted by many of his colleagues.

Don’t ease rules

Amidst all the concern about Hurricane Florence (whose strength, scientists tell us, is fueled by climate change), today’s N&O contains an article entitled “White House to ease rules about methane” (Sept. 12). The article points out that the Trump administration is preparing to make it much easier for energy companies to release methane into the atmosphere.

Most people are aware that carbon dioxide contributes to the greenhouse gas effect that is disrupting our climate. However, methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide . Methane leakage from power plants and pipelines needs to be reined in, not facilitated.

On the next page of the paper, another article, “Tillis now says that man is contributing to warming” (Sept. 12), notes that our own Senator Thom Tillis now recognizes that humans contribute to climate change.

I hope that the senator will be willing to show that his newfound concern is more than concern for the upcoming election and that he will work to convince the administration that preventing methane release is a better strategy for the future of humankind than creating policies that cater to the fossil fuel industry.

‘Decorum?’

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis recently presented an opinion that states: “Democrats on the committee have gone so far as to dispense with long-established Senate decorum and rules in order to fire up their base heading into the November midterm elections.”

After the treatment afforded to President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, this statement represents the pinnacle of hypocrisy. Garland was never even offered a hearing – so much for Senate decorum in the Republican world.

Senator Tills must think we voters have no memory, or that we are simply stupid. What little confidence I had in his good will and moral character before has now dissolved. As with the president he so ardently supports, neither history nor facts mean much in informing his actions.

‘Boondoggle’

“Why we need to build the Durham-Orange light-rail line” (Sept. 7) was a great example of the flaccid logic used by proponents of this program. They argue that infrastructure investments in Research Triangle Park many years ago worked at least in part because I-40 was built and, therefore, future infrastructure projects will have similar effects.

In fact, the success of Research Triangle Park predated completion of I-40 through it by years, if not decades. Today the I-40 corridor linking Orange, Durham and Wake Counties to RTP and RDU is bursting at the seams. Instead of focusing on this problem and encouraging an urgently needed tri-county solution, the authors latch their wagons to a 21-year-old, outdated plan that links UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill to Durham.

The current $3.3 billion plan falls woefully short and for decades will suck up all resources from any rail or a bus rapid transit network that could actually serve growth and density in the Triangle, especially in Orange County. We need courageous leaders willing to face reality, stop the boondoggle that’s being imposed on misled taxpayers, and start addressing our real needs, not just those of local developers.