Cost of air travel
Zero-emission buses (Tribune-Herald, July 27)? Is this a joke?
First of all, these are REVs, not ZEVs. They are remote-emission vehicles, not zero-emission vehicles. The electricity has to come from somewhere, and we now know that there is no such thing as a zero-emissions electrical source, only dirty sources and dirtier sources.
Even the manufacturing, maintenance and use of solar panels, wind turbines, sea-energy devices and geothermal installations require industries with attendant pollution and residues.
Because of Hawaii’s popularity and remote location, air-supported Hawaii tourism is one of the most environmentally filthy industries in the world. If Hawaii County really wants to diminish our carbon footprint as a community, a moderation of air-travel-supported tourism to the Big Island would reasonably be the starting point, not electric buses.
The time is also long overdue for our state government to stop aggressively promoting air tourism. This alone could have a huge positive impact toward the reduction of our entire state’s carbon footprint.
The clock is ticking on cheap air travel. Once the real cost of air travel, including environmental costs, is reflected in the ticket price, Hawaii tourism will decline. We should be preparing for that inevitability now.
I am inviting those in government and in our academic community to comment. A good starting point for this discussion would be a calculation of the entire environmental impact of air-supported Hawaiian tourism.
Surely, someone at one of our universities can furnish this information. Is anyone out there? Or would no academic or politician risk their career by opening this centrally important, but apparently kapu, discussion?
Robert Lee
Hilo
Build it
Two more years of talking will be required to build a new telescope (Thirty Meter Telescope) on Maunakea. It proves just one thing — our politicians are really good at kicking the can down the road.
The majority of people (even among Hawaiians) favor the TMT. Seems our politicians simply want to solidify our place in the bottom 10 states for business nationwide.
Just build it already.
Fred Fogel
Volcano
