Virtue Signaling Wastes America’s Potential

Barton Swaim’s Weekend Interview with Peter Huntsman (“A CEO Who Doesn’t Equivocate About Climate,” Aug. 19) reveals the central contradiction in contemporary America: the willingness of the business, political and cultural elites to substitute virtue signaling for realism.

Thus companies and governments pledge to achieve unachievable “clean” energy objectives within allotted time frames solely because saying so will avoid public condemnation and job loss. But pursuing such objectives wastes much-needed resources and will place the U.S. at a disadvantage with its nonwoke antagonists.

Mr. Huntsman’s clear-eyed view of the consequences of such hypocrisy is refreshing. Would that business leaders and others see the light and join in announcing that the woke emperor who controls our commerce, politics and culture has no clothes at all.

Marc E. Kasowitz

Partner, Kasowitz Benson Torres

New York

I respect the business Mr. Huntsman has built, but he glosses over some facts around the “dire predictions” of the past. His ability to now see the San Gabriel Mountains from his childhood home isn’t the result of false prophecy, but of concentrated regulation that improved air quality. The hole in the ozone wasn’t catastrophizing, but a global concern that was met with a global response: The Montreal Protocol. The free market has brought wonderful responses to many problems, and regulation can spur the market in the right direction.

Patrick Sprague

Ashland, Ohio