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Letters to the editor

Students must work to fight climate change

There has never been an issue as black and white as climate change. As a planet we can either follow the widely agreed upon science and cut our emissions by 40 percent by 2020 or face extinction as all of our planet's life support system changes drastically. There is no middle ground. There is no redo. But there is hope.

Last Wednesday, Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry unveiled the next incarnation of America's answer to global warming, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. In its current uncompromised state, the act has a bit of promise. For instance, the Murkowski Amendment that would have stopped the EPA from being able to regulate CO2 emissions has been dropped, and the proposed emission cuts by 2020 are substantial.

Although the act is a prodigious step forward in the fight against climate change, the bottom line is this bill will not produce the greenhouse gas pollution reductions recommended by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and therefore will not avert the catastrophic effects of runaway climate change. It is too little, too late. The real hope for the perpetuity of humankind rests in a fair, binding and ambitious treaty being implemented at the Copenhagen Climate Conference.

This December, world leaders will pour into Copenhagen to sign an international treaty in an effort to curb global Greenhouse Gas emissions and avoid the worst effects of climate change. The treaty itself is currently being negotiated, and if you thought American politics were overly bureaucratic, you can imagine how convoluted the international process has been. Through the chaos and nitpicking, developed countries such as the United States and China have been able to largely shirk off making any real commitments on paper. The negotiations are, as UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown remarks, "In grave danger." Our hope for a future rests not in our leaders, but in our power to influence them. Now more than ever, we need to tell President Obama that we are both ready and willing to take action to avert climate chaos and urge him to push for a fair, ambitious and binding treaty this December. The promises of green jobs, reduced foreign and corporate dependency and a stable climate await us on the other side.

To add your voice to the millions of people who are committed to saving our planet, come to the screening of Age of Stupid in the Heritage Room from 7 to 9 p.m. Oct. 13. Multiple environmental organizations will be present to give students the means to tell President Obama how you feel.

We will either go down in history as the generation that had the courage to break the status quo and do what is right or as the ones holding the smoking gun. How do you want to be remembered?

Max Blaushildblaushmw@muohio.edu

Public health care can improve quality of life

In a recent letter to the editor, senior Cory Bailey objected to the current health care reform efforts. However, the letter shows he fundamentally misunderstands the legislation before Congress.

First, he claims no private insurer will be able to compete with a government-run public option because of the government's unlimited ability to tax. This assessment is wrong. The public option will not be financed via taxes like Medicare. Rather, as the president clearly stated in his address to Congress, the public option will be sustained by the premiums of its members, just like private insurance. The difference is the public option will be non-profit, and thus will not have the high administrative costs, huge salaries (Aetna's CEO made $24 million last year) and outrageous profits that private insurers have. Therefore the public option will be a cheaper alternative to for-profit private insurance, thus causing private insurers to lower their rates to compete. The public option will be self-sufficient and will not be paid for with our tax dollars.

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Second, Bailey claims health care reform with a public option will eventually result in a complete government takeover of the health care industry. This is untrue. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that no more than 18 million people will sign up for the public option during the next 10 years. The same CBO study says the number of people with private insurance will actually increase as they will now be able to afford to buy it.

If the public option is less expensive and offers good service to its beneficiaries, then it should be a part of reform. And if the public option turns out to be a dysfunctional program that offers bad service, then nobody will choose it and will instead choose private insurers.

Third, Bailey claims that if the government did end up in control of health care, the result would be rationing and a lower quality of care. Once again, he is simply wrong. Our current government-run health care programs, Medicare, Medicaid and the VA, provide great care at a low cost (I would know, I currently have Medicaid). These health care programs have much higher satisfaction rates among their recipients than private insurers. It is the private insurers that have rationed care by consistently denying people's surgeries and dropping cancer patients from coverage, not Medicare. It is the private insurers that have raised premiums 130 percent during the past 10 years, not Medicare. And those countries with universal government-run health care have had far better results than the United States.

According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. ranks 37th in the world in health care, far below countries with "socialist" health care like France, Italy and the U.K. The U.S. also ranks below these other countries in terms of preventable deaths and life expectancy, all while spending more on health care as a percentage of GDP than any other country in the world. We must have health care reform if we want to lower costs, make the system more effective and ultimately save lives.

Chris Brockbrockcd@muohio.edu


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