Letters to the Editor: This infamous downtown L.A. Chevron isn’t an example of high gas prices in California

To the editor: The print-edition photo accompanying George Skelton’s column, “The Newsom administration’s confounding actions on gas prices,” showed a Chevron station selling gas for almost $7.86 per gallon, and it dates it to 2022. To a casual reader, this suggests that was a typical price for gas two years ago.

But this station, immediately north of Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles, is notorious as an outlier with scandalously sky high prices all the time. I know the station well; it’s often featured in national TV news stories on high gasoline prices.

But this station should not be taken as typical of anything. Stop using it as an example.

Richard Murphy, Whittier

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To the editor: Skelton misses the point and neglects to provide critical context when he writes: “So, an unelected bunch of regulators can arbitrarily adopt new rules without weighing the cost to consumers? Doesn’t seem right. Seems a bit irresponsible and arrogant.”

The California Air Resources Board’s carbon emission reduction efforts are in fact exactly about costs to consumers. The less we do to reduce, the more we will pay down the road to deal with the disruption, destruction and dislocation that Mother Nature will hand us due to human hubris.

Skelton’s all-too-common dismissive attitude about the enormous costs of climate change is the type of arrogance we should most be concerned about.

Dan Rothman, Fountain Valley