Clearing the air on carbon dioxide

I am writing to clear up confusion or misconceptions that could arise from a recent Forum letter (“Carbon is good for you”; June 2). The point of Priestley’s bell jar experiment was to identify the gas that supports fire and animal life: oxygen. The leaves in the bell jar absorbed carbon dioxide exhaled by the mouse and generated oxygen by the process of photosynthesis. It was already well known that carbon dioxide extinguishes a flame and can suffocate animals. In our own time, the Apollo 13 astronauts would have perished if their exhaled carbon dioxide was not removed from the air they were breathing. The same problem needs to be addressed in nuclear submarines.

On a global scale, the carbon dioxide that plants and trees consume is eventually returned to the environment in other chemical forms as they die and rot or are eaten. A problem arises when we burn carbon fuels and release in a few centuries carbon dioxide from carbon compounds that took biological processes millions of years to accumulate. Climate change is a complicated phenomenon, and well-informed people may disagree on its causes and impact. But the central role that carbon dioxide plays in greenhouse warming is well established.

Common sense suggests that we should carefully consider how to provide energy for the earth’s 8.2 billion people while safeguarding the ecosystem in which we live.

Richard Milius

Lebanon

The writer is the former chairman of the Norwich University Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Citizenship and
the one big bill

My grandparents were “legally” stripped of their citizenship as a result of a change in laws. Then they were rendered to a prison in a different country under the guise of deportation. That was in the 1930s in Germany.

Now, in 2025, our administration is fighting in court to dismantle birthright citizenship granted by the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. According to Axios, “top Trump aide Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded that immigration agents seek to arrest 3,000 people a day.” Consequently, masked ICE agents have accelerated the rounding up of suspects, including those with legal immigration status as well as US citizens. Some of these people have already been rendered to foreign prisons in the name of deportation.

Given the pressure and speed needed to meet the administration’s demand to deport 1 million people a year, due process is being ignored, and evidence of legal status, including citizenship, is no longer a guarantee of security. As the daughter of a refugee immigrant, am I safe? Part of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is an additional $147 billion in immigration funds over the next 10 years to facilitate this plan. This is one of many, many reasons that this current budget bill must be defeated.

Deborah Springhorn

West Lebanon

What businesses are for

My grandfather entered business not to “make money” but to serve a community need. He also believed in the now extinct concept of employer loyalty. Success is subjective, but he was the happiest person I ever knew.

Today, businesses focus more on customer acquisition than retention. Instead of promoting actual leadership, the focus is on toxic leadership — assigning blame and firing employees — the Jack Welch approach of sacrificing long term growth for short term gains.

Let’s reject this futile attitude, put our money where our mouth is and promote conscientious spending. Stop supporting parasitic companies with work cultures like Tesla that over-promise and under-deliver. You can drive a Tesla or care for the planet; you can’t do both.

Charles Olsen

West Fairlee