Fool me once. … The oldest among us remember how Big Tobacco firms paid Think Tanks and pricey PR firms to convince our parents that smoking was safe, cool and even healthy.

Fool me twice. … Now as we learn Big Oil companies have been hiring the very same PR firms and disgraced scientists for years to convince us that fossil fuels are The American Way, literally wrapping our American flag around a dirty oil can. We see the roots of this love affair.

It’s been very expensive to get the public to reject clean energy. After all, we have to give up a stable economy, predictable weather, healthier children and illegal forays into other nations. We are forced to watch our incredibly creative clean energy sector move to the back of the line behind as many as nine other countries who run their economies totally on renewables, with the rest of Europe close behind. China, who we are told started this hoax, has captured the EV market internationally.

This is in the interest of the few. Exxon records a $59 billion profit in one year alone, with all oil companies receiving $40 billion in subsidies in the next decade.

As Tom Steyer, billionaire financier states in his book, “Cheaper, Faster, Better,” “How do you measure the full cost of a barrel of oil? It’s complicated.” Fossil fuel companies receive tax breaks boosting their profits while taxpayers pay to clean up the human and environmental disasters at their expense.

Judy Grove

Altoona, retired teacher