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New Horizons Mission Operations Manager Alice Bowman of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory is seen before a news conference after the team received confirmation from the New Horizons spacecraft that it has completed the flyby of Ultima Thule, Jan. 1, 2019, at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.HANDOUT/Reuters

Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

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High flights: CEO pay, Ultima Thule

Re Critics Paint Misleading Picture Of CEO-To-Worker Pay Gap (Report on Business, Jan. 3): “In the 1950s, a typical CEO made 20 times the salary of his or her average worker. Last year, CEO pay at an S&P 500 Index firm soared to an average of 361 times more than the average rank-and-file worker, or pay of $13,940,000 a year … ” That statement appeared in Forbes Magazine in May, 2018 – not Mother Jones!

The eye-watering escalation of executive pay is completely out of line with increases in corporate earnings or stock market values. It is, instead, a function of the gaming of the system by directors and executives, and their paid accomplices, the compensation consulting industry. Today, even mediocre executives earn rewards which far more competent counterparts in an earlier age would have regarded as theft.

Government needs to step in with punitive taxes to restore order to a system hijacked by its beneficiaries.

Ted Cape, Toronto

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The three authors, all economists with the Fraser Institute, attempt to justify excessive CEO pay by suggesting the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay is not so bad if we compare all CEOs and not just the top 100. For the top 100, the ratio is, in their words, “a staggering” 189 to 1. However, they provide no real justification for the dramatic rise in these ratios over time.

For example, in 1965 the CEO-to-worker pay ratio in the United States was just 20 to 1.

What’s changed?

The authors of an American study on CEO compensation at the Economic Policy Institute concluded that high pay rates for CEOs do not reflect a competitive market for special skills (and thus greater productivity) but rather the power of CEOs to garner more concessions for themselves.

One would expect a similar conclusion in Canada.

David Enns, Cornwall, Ont.

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What irony. NASA scientists are celebrating the wondrous success of the exploratory space probe that’s sending home images of Ultima Thule from the edge of the known universe, while here on our tiny lifeboat that floats in the incomprehensibly vast sea of space, we have much less lofty concerns (Spacecraft Transmits First Glimpses Of A Planetoid 6.6 Billion Km Away – Jan. 2).

Canadians are busy arguing about the merits of a new tax that ostensibly will help curb the burning of the fossil fuels that are slowly, but surely, destroying the fragile environment that sustains us all. Meanwhile, there are some 80 long-term drinking advisories for First Nations; one in five children risks going to school hungry, more than 200,000 Canadians go homeless every year, and Canada’s highest-paid CEOs are closing in on earning 200 times more than the “average” worker.

Elsewhere on this planet, people continue slaughtering and persecuting each another in the name of various superstitions, political beliefs, and competing gods vying to save us all from our sins. Millions of desperate refugees are on the move, fleeing war, drought, flooding, starvation, disease and pestilence. Hostile nations are rushing to build nuclear bombs, hypersonic missiles, and other WMDs. And so it goes.

Welcome to 2019. Who says there’s intelligent life on Earth?

Ken Cuthbertson, Kingston

East/West renewables

Re Canada’s Renewables Industry Heads West (Dec. 31): You report that the average winning bid in Alberta results in paying only 3.9 cents per kilowatt hour for wind power, compared to the price of power from refurbished nuclear plants in Ontario – between 7 and 8 cents per kilowatt hour.

But there is a big difference in the availability of wind versus nuclear power. Alberta has one of the best wind resources in the country in the Pincher Creek area, and even so the wind only produces power less than half the time, compared to nuclear at nearly 100 per cent. So wind power needs to be backstopped by another source, which is typically carbon emitting. For wind (and solar) power to actually replace fossil fuels, energy storage technologies need to be developed that are efficient, affordable and scalable.

In the meantime, the most important source of electricity to replace fossil fuels over the coming decades will be nuclear (and we need a price on carbon to make it happen).

David Konarek, Toronto

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In documents filed with the Ontario Energy Board, Ontario Power Generation has stated that the costs for the refurbishment of the Darlington nuclear facility could mean power at 16.8 cents per kilowatt hour, more than double the 7 to 8 cent per kilowatt hour figure cited in the article, and more than four times the price at which the article notes wind power was offered in the Alberta electricity market.

If the Ford government is serious about reducing electricity costs for Ontario residents, it needs to get over its aversion to renewable energy, and engage in a serious review of the province’s energy options beyond the enormously costly and risky refurbishments of the Darlington and Bruce nuclear facilities, and “life extension” of the aged Pickering nuclear plant.

Mark S. Winfield, Co-Chair, Sustainable Energy Initiative, York University

Solution? Not really

Re Saving The Planet Via Sustainable To-Go Cups (Jan. 1): The solution” of devising an eco-friendly to-go cup – a.k.a. disposable cup – is exactly the “problem” itself.

How many of us have a daily routine of getting a cup of java on the go? I do, and every day I bring my reusable cup (it has a lid, stays hot and is my nod to the planet I am a tenant of). It’s as easy as bringing keys. When I’m done, I pop it in my purse or satchel. Easy.

It is imperative that we start thinking about how our small, individual actions reverberate and impact the Earth and its peoples. One coffee times 365 days: one reusable cup or 365 disposable cups. Easy choice to save this planet.

Natalie Breton, Toronto

Canada’s literary trail

What a delight to see Jean Little’s birthday celebrated in Moment in Time (Jan. 2, 1932), and her well-deserved honours for her many contributions to literature.

Project Bookmark dedicated a plaque in her name last month at Toronto’s Yorkville Public Library. A passage of her novel, If I Die Before I Wake: The Flu Epidemic Diary of Fiona Macgregor – a story of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic told through the eyes of a 12-year-old Toronto girl – formed the text.

Ms. Little was at the dedication, together with a group of very enthusiastic students from Jesse Ketchum Public School, which the author herself attended as a child. It was a marvel watching such a magical storyteller take these 10-year-olds back to her classroom in the 1940s.

Readers interested in learning about other bookmarks – there are more than 20 creating a literary trail across Canada – can visit the Project Bookmark website.

Thank you for recognizing Ms. Little – such a positive way to start 2019.

BTW – due diligence – I am on the board of directors of Project Bookmark, a little known, but very cool charitable organization!

Susan Lightstone, Toronto

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