Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com
..................................................................................................................................
This way to eco-action
Re Climate Change? It's A Taxing Business (editorial, March 4): For Canada to deal with climate change, we should recognize that we can mix revenue generation with environmental constraints by visualizing one system where Canada's hydrocarbons and oil-sands development is a package with "clean," low-emission hydroelectricity and nuclear-based electrical energies.
This would create "emissions room" for revenue and job-generating hydrocarbon processing, as well as meet environmental commitments made by governments at provincial and federal levels.
These are the engines of Canada's energy system and should not be treated as silos to be attacked by special interest groups.
Wealth creation proceeding in parallel with carbon taxing should allow the latter to be easier to digest.
Walter F. Petryschuk, Sarnia, Ont.
.........
Jeffrey Simpson says "no government has yet figured out how to share the cost of GHG reductions fairly across the country, as between provinces whose per-capita output is large compared to those where it is small" (Talking Climate Is Cheap. Action Is Expensive – March 3).
In a recent study, my colleagues and I advanced a proposal for doing exactly that:
1) Put the issue of cost-sharing explicitly on the table, instead of ignoring it as governments have done to date;
2) Through a formal federal-provincial-territorial agreement, strengthen the bargaining arena to minimize chances of opting out (threatened by Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall);
3) Do technical studies of the most efficient cost allocation;
4) Use those findings as a starting point to negotiate an acceptable cost allocation. That process must be guided by a motivated federal government, using sticks of threatened federal regulation and carrots of financial assistance.
Douglas Macdonald, School of the Environment, University of Toronto; lead author, Allocating Canadian Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions Amongst Sources and Provinces: Learning from the European Union, Australia and Germany
.........
Divided by The Donald
Re Trump Is Running Against History (March 4): The farcical Republican nominating contest and endless sophomoric debates, which reached a new low Thursday night with Mr. Trump appearing to brag about penis size, are nothing but a side show to the main event. The election is the only thing that matters. Although Mr. Trump may well have rock-solid support within the crackpot core of the narrowing Republican base in numbers sufficient to secure the nomination within a splintered candidate field, on a national electoral basis he is a demographic nightmare.
Frank Malone, Aurora, Ont.
.........
The fact that Donald Trump is increasingly facing attempts from his own party to derail his candidacy is clear evidence that the Republican Party is its own worst enemy. He may be unconventional, but he is winning. Why shoot yourself in the political foot?
The Donald is the best chance that the Republicans have had in years. Politics has never been about likeability – it's always been about winning. If the Republican Party doesn't back Mr. Trump (assuming he keeps winning), then it is the end of the Grand Old Party, the conservatives in the United States will splinter into rival little groups and a large conservative party will cease to exist.
Douglas Cornish, Ottawa
.........
It would be cruel and unjust
Re Should Right-To-Die Law Apply To Mentally Ill People? (March 1): Some years ago, a 50-year-old colleague threw himself to his death from a 22nd-storey window. He had been mentally ill for many years; no treatment had alleviated his symptoms. His illness was unbearable and irremediable. While this level of suffering is probably less common in mental health than in physical health, it would be cruel and unjust to deprive mentally ill people of physician assisted death according to the same criteria and with the same safeguards as the physically ill.
Margaret E. McPhee, Vancouver
.........
How sweet sugar isn't
The Senate report on battling obesity presents some fixes that involve expensive government machinery without having tried a quick and easy first step (You Can't Fight Obesity Without Tackling Fat Shaming – March 3; Sweet Solutions – editorial, March 3).
Many Canadians, fit and trying to get fit, consult the "Nutrition Facts" labels on most foods and beverages. The labels contain amounts of calories, fats, carbs, fibre and various nutrients. Helpfully, the labels also set out the percentage of daily values for each. Consideration of these daily values can guide one to make healthy choices on what to consume.
There is one ingredient for which no daily value is offered – sugar. Canada follows the U.S. in setting and reporting such values, but there is no agreement on what the daily value for sugar should be. The World Health Organization made a recommendation for a common daily sugar value (in the order of 25 grams) only to have this figure criticized as too low. If the Americans, under pressure from the sugar industry, won't label, neither will we.
When one sees on a label that a single 591 ml serving of pop can contain 70 grams of sugar, the potential lost revenue to food companies from consumers' sticking to a recommended daily value is immense – a cost only exceeded by that to taxpayers funding our health-care system to deal with obesity and, of course, to the individual whose health is put at risk.
Greg Schmidt, Calgary