While I appreciate the fact that a responsible goal of journalism is to present all sides of an issue, the Post-Gazette has missed the mark on the right side by publishing Jonathon Lesser’s analysis on the effects of electric cars on the environment (Dec. 30 Forum, “Are Electric Cars Worse for the Environment?”).

His piece is blatantly one-sided, ignoring the contribution of the internal combustion engin to global warming, focusing on pollutants but ignoring carbon dioxide’s contribution to climate change completely.

As an academic, he is certainly capable of analyzing the numbers if he looked at all facts dispassionately, but his generalizations sweep with no facts presented to bolster his conclusions. In 2014 he wrote, “The inability of current climate models to explain the lack of warming over the past 15 years, plus predictions that the sun may be entering a prolonged period of low activity, suggest that much more analysis must be done before we impoverish ourselves by choking off economic growth. Don’t put that winter coat in storage quite yet.”

This claim is demonstrably incorrect, especially given that five of the warmest years on record have occurred in this decade. Indeed, this recitation of how benign pollution from internal combustion engines is comes from someone who has denied climate change dozens of times in the last decade in articles for the Manhattan Institute, which receieves funding from oil interests.

There is settled science on climate change that is ignored in his self-serving analysis. Though he has training in economics, he is hardly a scientist qualified to illuminate topics beyond his training but about which he has nonetheless regularly written. Even within his field, he misses the obvious when he ignores the contribution of renewable energy to the economy, especially since clean energy employs more people that extractive coal does, producing rising wages and a domestic manufacturing base without producing negative impact on the environment.

Both sides of this important public discussion should be published instead of loading the dice.

John Luff
Sewickley

First Published: January 8, 2019, 5:00 a.m.