To the Editor:

I agree that Amy Pokorny deserves credit for her efforts to secure grant money; I just think her passion is misplaced.

She said at the Knox Town Board Feb. 14 meeting that the car chargers could be dismantled after two years and sold. This technology will improve in time, to where an installment in 2017 will be outdated and worthless or the whole idea of electric cars will be on the scrap heap of bad ideas.

The grant money is coming from tax money. State money is funding NYSERDA [the New York State Energy Resource and Development Authority]. This kind of use of our tax dollars is why New York State and the federal government is so far in debt.

My point is this: Allow electric cars, solar panels, and alternate power to stand on its own. Our tax money should not be subsidizing the effort.

Climate change is based on a lie. Al Gore and his followers are peddling that lie. In his book, Gore predicted that parts of New York City would  be underwater due to the melting polar caps. Carbon dioxide is supposed to be harmful to our planet yet basic science shows us that it’s used by plants that in turn give off oxygen.

Over the centuries, tons of carbon and harmful gases have been thrown into our air by volcanic action and the atmosphere has cleaned itself up!

Three weeks ago, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change admitted, at a news conference in Brussels, that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity, but to destroy capitalism.

Here’s a quote from the secretary: “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves to the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

I live in what Ernest Cupernall at the Feb. 14 meeting called “some backwater place” — Township.

Dave Shafer

Knox

Editor’s note: According to the United States National Research Council, “There is a strong, credible body of evidence, based on multiple lines of research, documenting that climate is changing and that these changes are in large part caused by human activities. While much remains to be learned, the core phenomenon, scientific questions, and hypotheses have been examined thoroughly and have stood firm in the face of serious scientific debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations.”

The quote from Christiana Figueres cited by Dave Shafer is accurate; the interpretation is from “Covert Geopolitics.” Figueres, who led the Paris Climate Agreements, told CNN last month that de-carbonization is not set by ideology but by economics, pointing out that one out of every 50 jobs in the United States is in solar energy; she argued that, if the United States doesn’t meet demands for cheap renewable energy, China and India will.