PLUGGING IN THE PLANET

Re your inspiring article "Green Machines," on how new technology can heal the environment [March 23]: I was impressed by French engineer Guy Negre's new Zero Pollution Urban Taxi that is powered by compressed air. It sounds like a great idea, but is it truly more energy efficient?
MEGAN NIKOLAI
Vienna

There are a lot of solutions to environmental problems; often they are not high tech, simply applied common sense. For example, a farmer can grow rapeseed in his fields and then make his own fuel by extracting the oil with a cheap press. Also, microbes can be used to do cleanup and conversion work, an old practice in Germany and other countries. Such composting can convert organic wastes into fertilizer. Another possibility for producing energy is the R.K.P. (recycling, composting, pyrolysis) plant, whereby all reusable metal and plastic are separated out, the remaining organic materials are composted, and everything that is left is passed through a low-temperature pyrolysis unit that produces energy in gaseous form.
HELMUT M.E. SCHULLENBERG
Bubach, Germany

In discussing an environmentally friendly form of automobile fuel called biodiesel (rapeseed-methyl-ester), you stated that "for biodiesel to become competitive [with petroleum diesel], the price for a gallon of crude would have to increase by $1.33." In the Netherlands we pay (at current exchange rates) $3.97 for a gallon of gasoline and $2.67 for a gallon of diesel fuel. Perhaps if Americans were forced to pay the high prices the rest of the world does for energy, the cost of biodiesel would not appear so uncompetitive, and we could all share the developmental costs.
DAVE HORNE
Helvoirt, the Netherlands

Kudos for your constructive report on Green Machines. The choice between sustainability and extinction is up to us.
GERRY SHAPIRO
Livingston Village, Scotland

SEX AND THE LAW

Grownup men don't harass women, and mature women don't get harassed [March 23]. The real-life issue driving harassment is the abuse of power by men and women. Power is the temptress behind much of what is morally wrong in this world, whether it is abusing our children, harassing others or bullying a foreign country.
HANNS J. KRISTEN
San Anselmo, Calif.

Don't you think we've heard enough about Clinton and sex? There are more important problems. Clinton is a regular human being who has a private life just like every other person.
RAPHAEL SHEINBERG
Brussels

President Clinton may be a careless man, but he does not deserve all this torture and humiliation, especially from a hypocritical and sinful society.
IFEANYI T. OGBONNA
Port Harcourt, Nigeria

You've covered the Clinton sex scandals too thoroughly. Of course these charges deserve some attention because they involve the President, but tabloids can cover this kind of thing. The Kosovo situation is threatening to thrust the Balkans (and the whole world) back into war, but you give it scant coverage. Which of the two is more important?
RUTGER THIJSSEN, age 13
Hilversum, the Netherlands

The articles about Clinton's sexual adventures make me realize how profound and idiotic is the American hypocrisy about morality. Are Americans aware of such a thing as a right to privacy and intimacy?
MARIA EUFROSINA GUZMAN
Pamplona, Spain

The rest of the world looks on in wonderment as the U.S. turns the life and times of its President into a ridiculous soap opera.
MARCUS W. KNEEN
Benoni, South Africa

You reported at length about the difficulty of proving sexual harassment. This may discourage some women and men from coming forward when they are put in painful or hostile situations. A hands-off policy is the only one that can be maintained between two individuals when one is a manager and the other an employee. It applies to touching the body as well as demands for friendship and companionship in situations where a spurned advance may jeopardize one's employment. A dignified work relationship implies a certain amount of reserve and courtesy. Simple decency forbids the exercise of power to punish and complicate the life of one who refuses to submit to the desires of another person.
BENET DAVETIAN
Montreal

What we should demand from politicians is integrity and honesty. I couldn't care less if President Clinton has slept with women other than his wife. Although he is a public figure, the man has a right to privacy. I am more concerned about whether Clinton asked Lewinsky to commit perjury. If he did, then he is lacking in integrity and honesty. That makes him untrustworthy. But if all he is guilty of is a libido in overdrive, let's leave him in peace and get on with our lives!
FARHANA SHARMEEN
Dhaka

A PATTERN FOR ALL SEASONS

El Nino is as natural a pattern as are the seasons [Feb. 23], since it is not produced by human actions. But global warming has an effect on El Nino because it influences the climate of the whole earth and enforces natural extremes, droughts as well as floods. Temperature differences increase, and that causes more and heavier storms and other natural catastrophes. You have to pay attention to all the connections in climate because everything is related. You cannot separate one phenomenon from the climate as a whole.
THOMAS FEHER and BENJAMIN GREIFF
Dresden, Germany

WE AREN'T MUCH GOOD ANYWAY

Re Lewis Grossberger's amusing commentary [March 23] on the mistaken announcement by astronomers that a "Giant Killer Asteroid" is streaking toward Earth: Wouldn't it be great if more people agreed with Grossberger that we earthlings have really not accomplished much and "the end of civilization as we know it isn't such a bad idea"? We could take his advice and issue press releases reading, "Hey, we gave it our best shot, but we really weren't up to this existence business. So we're out of here." Deep inside, you know who you are.
ALAN REID
Abbeydale, England

STANDING TALL

I was intrigued by your article on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan [March 9]. In most south Indian dialects, annan means elder brother, someone who is older and definitely wiser. A vintage meaning, perhaps, but it is a deserved honorific for one who stands taller and sees farther than most of us. In these days of shortsighted one-upmanship, it is comforting to know that we have such annans to care for us. May I take the liberty of calling the U.N. leader annan just once with the flavor of meaning of my mother tongue?
UNNIKRISHNAN K. PANICKAR
Kerala, India

LIFE UNDER PINOCHET

Your report on Chile's former president Augusto Pinochet Ugarte's becoming a Senator [March 23] offered a view of what happened during and after the Salvador Allende regime, which ended in 1973. If everything had continued the way it was under Allende and there had been no Pinochet, we Chileans would have been the victims of a national educational system aimed at training a future generation of Chilean communists according to Marxist rules. Our Chilean parents would not have been able to bring up their children according to their own principles and convictions. Freedom is very important in all senses. Without Pinochet, I would not be a Catholic, a believer in democracy or the free thinker that I am today.
M. CRISTINA VALENZUELA DE DOMIC
Sao Paulo

SUHARTO GOES IT ALONE

Thanks for a balanced article on Indonesia's economic crisis [March 23]. Fifty years ago, we Indonesians won independence; 20 years later, we kicked out the world's third biggest Communist Party; and for 30 years we have been marching toward prosperity. Then came the crisis, started by our Asian neighbors. If we want to survive, we will have to follow the International Monetary Fund's prescriptions. But the conditions set by the IMF are not entirely fair. If we adhere to them completely, our economy will be the most open one in the world, but it will be controlled by the big, financially powerful multinational corporations. There will not be much left of Indonesian independence. Some people think we let President Suharto stay in power out of fear, but the real reason is that we knew he would deliver on his promises. Now we are not so sure.
RAHMAD DESMI
Sangatta, Indonesia

MAD ABOUT HELEN HUNT

Thanks for the magnificent article on Oscar winner and TV star Helen Hunt [March 23]. It is a joy to see someone with so much talent and class approach the status of being a national treasure.
KEVIN JOHNSON
Vallejo, Calif.

CONCENTRATION CAMPS

Writing about the arrest of Alfons Goetzfried you state that he is accused of "shepherding some 70,000 people to their deaths at a Polish concentration camp." At no time during World War II were there any Polish concentration camps; all concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland were established by the Germans. You not only do great injustice to the Polish people, but, unintentionally, you are changing historical facts.
MIECZYSLAW SZCZECINSKI
Honorary President
Polish Combatants' Association in Canada, Inc.
Toronto

[In the March 16, 1998 issue of Time a Milestone item incorrectly used the phrase "Polish concentration camps" to refer to the Nazi death camps in Poland. We regret the error.]

DON'T TAKE IT SO SERIOUSLY

Some of our more experienced female readers are disappointed by the way women today deal with sexual advances in the workplace [March 23]. Although they oppose sexual harassment, they argue that a deft approach to unwanted attention can often defuse an awkward situation. "When I entered the work force 30 years ago," remembered Katherine C. Reynolds of Columbia, S.C., "women either enjoyed sexual overtures, endured them or ended up outsmarting and outlasting the harassers." From Sebastopol, Calif., Phyllis Clement recalled that "50 years ago, all young women knew some fellows who had wandering-hand trouble; we spread the word about them." Alyce McCormick of Amherst, Mass. wrote, "I am an 82-year-old who loved to flirt. But my friends and I played by the rules, and one was, Kiss, certainly, but don't kiss and tell."