{"id":410957,"date":"2026-07-24T17:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/410957\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T17:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:05:08","slug":"willful-blindness-about-fossil-fuels-a-threat-to-humanity-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/410957\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Willful blindness\u2019 about fossil fuels a threat to humanity \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Re \u201cReliable energy key to all America has achieved\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sandiegouniontribune.com\/2026\/07\/20\/opinion-america-at-250-built-by-ingenuity-powered-by-energy\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">July 20)<\/a>: I was outraged to read the piece by Mike Wirth. He waxes nostalgic at the power of America\u2019s energy dominance and how that made us a world power. He mentions technological innovation being of great importance. However, the newest innovations are in renewable energy, not fossil fuels, which he does not acknowledge at all. The continued burning of fossil fuels is killing our planet. The heat waves we now experience regularly would be impossible without extreme climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels. Thanks to the lobbying by Chevron and other fossil fuel companies, the current administration has cut all funding and permitting for renewable energy. They are dooming our standing as a dominant world power while other countries (e.g., China) are investing heavily into renewable energy.\u00a0 Wirth\u2019s willful blindness and backward-looking arrogance are the true enemies of our future.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Beth Friel, Encinitas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Re \u201cReliable energy key to all America has achieved\u201d (July 20): I was outraged to read the piece&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1564,975,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-410957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-letters-to-the-editor","tag-opinion","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}