Letters to the Editor: July 12, 2024

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Ford a distractor

The rationale for Doug Ford’s $225 million cancellation of the Beer Store contract, and now the LCBO strike becomes clearer every day. Distraction is his most effective re-election strategy.

Don’t have a family doctor? Had to wait 14 hours in an emergency room or two years for a hip replacement? No long-term care bed for your mom? Don’t worry, just buy a beer at the gas station and you’ll feel better in no time.

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If we keep falling for his trinkets – buck a beer, free license plate renewal – we deserve lousy the health care we are getting.

Laurie Kay, London

Expensive process

Regarding reporting on carbon capture and sequestering.

Carbon dioxide is a gas, and it is mixed with other gases when it leaves a combustion process.

Separating CO2 from the other gases it is mixed with is a very energy-intensive process.

The energy it takes to separate the gases reduces the amount of energy gained from the original combustion process, therefore reducing the overall energy efficiency.

Pressing CO2 as a gas under pressure into the ground is one suggested way to sequester and store the CO2.

The problem is that a gas under pressure likes to diffuse and dissipate, ultimately working its way back into the atmosphere. Any fracture or crack will allow the gas under pressure to escape.

For truly long-term storage, the CO2 needs to react with minerals in the ground to be chemically bound in solid form.

This requires a special geology, which is available only at limited sites, with limited absorption capacity. This will require transport of CO2 from the separation site to the storage site, again energy lost in the overall process.

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Carbon capture and sequestering is not financially viable. Avoiding the CO2 being generated in the first place by reducing the combustion of fossil fuels is the much better and more viable way to avoid that CO2 being added to the atmosphere.

Addressing the root cause versus putting a Band-Aid onto the consequences is the smarter way to go.

Invest in more renewable energy generation instead of subsidies that support the fossil fuel industry.

Klaus Daqhring, Windsor

Big parties failing

The disturbing political news of the past week involving Justin Trudeau’s denial of his fate, Donald Trump’s bombastic unsuitability for the U.S. presidency and Joe Biden’s mental deterioration don’t indicate democracy is failing. Big party democracy is failing.

The enablers and power hungry backroomers who keep the inept in power are the ones that must go.

It is time to examine how we conduct our democracy.

David Woodley, Burlington

Trudeau must go

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a chance to do better for Canada and blew it.

We must say goodbye to Trudeau once and for all.

Wayne Robertson, Chatham

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