Letters to the Editor: California car buyers can make their own choice to bolster state's climate defenses
To the editor: I was heartened to read California has several avenues to continue combating climate change, such as taxing polluting vehicles like Norway does, compelling trucking companies at the ports to use electric trucks and especially Senate Bill 684, the bill making polluters pay. All of these together give us clout ('With its climate progress under assault, California takes up a multipronged defense,' May 18).
But there is another tactic we have that, if deployed, would be extremely effective. It's also easy enough that most can do it. Stop buying gas cars. No one can force you to buy a polluting car. Electric vehicles are cost effective for anyone purchasing a car from $10,000 and up, which is most everyone. The average new car price is $48,000, but you can get new EVs with 300 miles in range for under $35,000.
So never buy a gas car again. President Trump may be trying to block California's ability to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035, but California car buyers have their own power: the power to choose the better vehicle that doesn't pollute.
Paul Scott, Santa Monica
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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- CNN
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His own transition – which started when he was 52 after deep soul-searching and years of 'feeling like he was wearing a mask' – gave him the same sense of freedom. 'I felt like I was reborn,' he said. 'For the first time in my life, I felt like I was being truly me.' It's the same freedom that he hopes can be a lesson from trans people for the rest of the world, even as trans people face 'horrible' attacks on their freedoms and rights. 'Trans people teach the rest of society that freedom is real – because we live freedom every day,' he said. 'We live authenticity every day.' Being trans has been the ultimate expression of self-love, he added. 'That's our superpower, is that we love ourselves so much that we're able to make a choice that is for us only,' he said. 'That's the highest form of self-love.' For Pauline Park, attacks on transgender and queer identity are more than just repressive. They also directly contradict a long and rich history of gender variance across the world. 'There have been people like us since the dawn of history,' she told CNN. She pointed to transgender traditions like the hijra community in South Asia and kathoey in Thailand, as well as Guanyin, a figure in Buddhist mythology who is often represented as genderless or as shifting from male to female. 'It's important to recognize that, in the larger span of history, we have existed, and we will continue to exist,' she said. Park's own coming out went hand-in-hand with her work advocating for LGBT rights. Like Ramos and Smith, Park had long known she was trans – but adopted from South Korea into a 'Christian, fundamentalist household' when she was less than a year old, she 'knew instinctively' that her gender identity wasn't something she could discuss with her parents. Even same-sex marriage was 'inconceivable' when she grew up, she said. A career pivot to LGBT activism brought her to lead the campaign for a transgender rights bill in New York City, and she came out and began living as a woman full-time shortly after. 'Actualizing my transgender identity has been instrumental in my ability to bring about social change,' she said. Park cofounded the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy and has helped advocate for trans rights across the state. Park has led hundreds of transgender sensitivity trainings, she said, where one of the main goals is to help participants 'realize that when you're talking about transgender, you're actually talking about everyone,' she said. 'Not that everyone is trans, but the issues that transgender people face are issues that are rooted in structural oppressions,' she explained. 'We have to think about society as a whole – and whether we want to make it welcoming and inclusive or not.' That work is particularly important right now, when 'the community is now under unprecedented attack, from the highest leadership in the land,' according to Park. She called transphobia 'one of the last generally acceptable prejudices in our society.' She added that anti-trans legislation will have the most devastating impacts on trans youth. Restrictions on gender-affirming care, she said, won't stop trans youth from pursuing that care – but they might mean that they turn to black market solutions instead of gender-affirming therapy overseen by a doctor. 'People will actualize their identities if they want to, even in the face of legal and structural impediments,' she said. 'The effort to try to eliminate gender-affirming care is going to fail, but it's going to harm a lot of people,' she said. 'It's ultimately both futile and morally reprehensible – and it won't work.' For Justin Vivian Bond, the Trump administration's attacks on nonbinary identity reflect 'willful ignorance' more than anything else. The 62-year-old cabaret performer and actor grew up in the 60s and 70s, when even same-sex marriage seemed a far-off dream. As a child, they were terrified to come out to their family. Today, they're a trailblazer in nonbinary representation and something of an institution in New York City's music and theater scene. 'Some people are so resistant to anything that they don't know that they'll never know me – because they're just too ignorant,' they said. The concept of trans or nonbinary identities might be new to some people, they noted. But 'constant change, constant evolution, is part of being alive,' they went on. 'Otherwise you might as well just, you know, hang up your hat and go home and never leave again — or, in other words, drop dead.' A Maryland native, Bond's own career is a testament to the evolution of queer art and culture. They started their career in San Francisco, performing in trans playwright Kate Bornstein's 'Hidden: A Gender' before developing the legendary character of Kiki, 'a 60-some-year-old alcoholic lounge singer with ex-husbands and children,' one half of the 'Kiki and Herb' cabaret duo in which Bond performed in drag. The over-the-top, enraged character was forged at the height of the AIDS epidemic, through a palpable sense of anger from 'the knowledge that the people in power literally wanted us dead.' Since then, Bond has built a flourishing career as a solo artist, maintaining a years-long residency at Joe's Pub at The Public Theater in NYC and receiving a 2024 MacArthur 'genius grant' for crafting 'performances that center queer joy.' Bond's gender, like their artistic practice, is 'constantly evolving,' they said. After decades playing with gender and performance in their on-stage work and life, they started taking hormone replacement therapy in their 50s. 'Still to this day, I don't like being trapped into any identity, because it's just not something that is fixed,' they explained. Bond's own response to the newest waves of attacks by the Trump administration was one of exasperation and frustration: 'Why do we have to go through this?' But the queer community has survived worse, they said. 'All of our rights were fought for,' they said. 'We've always had ways of working around these patriarchal nimrods, and living our lives and being happy and enjoying each other's company and dancing together and partying together and living together and sleeping together and cooking together.' 'That's not going to stop just because they say we should be unhappy.' Dawn Melody realized that she might be trans later in life – after her son came out first. In 2012, her 12-year-old told her he was transgender. Melody, trusting her children to 'tell [her] who they are,' quickly affirmed his identity, supporting him as he cut his hair and came out to friends and family. 'Watching that young person go on to bravely be who they are' was 'inspiring,' she said. And a few years later, it inspired her own soul-searching. Melody had long harbored an ineffable feeling that 'something was different.' But growing up in an Irish Catholic household in Westchester, New York, being queer was off the table – and 'the idea of transgender, that was like being from another planet,' she told CNN. In her 50s, Melody, still searching for the source of that constant feeling of 'difference,' sought out women's clothes and a wig to test-drive presenting as a woman at home. That first trial felt 'miraculous,' she said. Melody said that she had ultimately been inspired by her son's 'steadfast' commitment to his identity. 'This is me taking the cue from my child that that if you're brave enough to do this, so am I,' she said. When Trump first began signing anti-trans legislation in January, she felt 'nausea.' 'He declared it during his inauguration speech that I don't exist,' she said. 'That I'm undesirable.' Melody framed the executive orders as 'frantically trying to sweep back the sea when the sea can't be swept back.' But 'there's no way to stop progress,' she said. And despite the attacks, being trans is 'the best thing that ever happened to me,' she added. 'I'm glad that I am this way, and I wouldn't change it for all the tea in China,' she said. Living as a woman feels like 'swimming with the current' after decades of fighting to swim across it, she said. She added that she hopes trans youth today can keep faith in themselves despite a wave of anti-trans sentiment and legislation. 'It's not without its moments of horror and fear, but life is such a gift – and it's way too short.'
