Be realistic in efforts to address climate change

The article “Gas pipeline plan highlights climate battle,” Jan. 25, and other recent stories raise the need for both sides to confront certain climate realities. Fossil fuel purveyors need to acknowledge their role in causing the climate crisis instead of continuing their campaigns of misinformation and greenwashing. Environmentalists must concede that fossil fuels can’t go away as quickly as we’d like until we overcome the siting, permitting, financing, grid distribution and other challenges in deploying sufficient renewables.

The fossil fuel industry needs to come clean and stop pretending “natural” gas is not mostly methane, then honestly discuss its phaseout and our real interim needs.

Rather than expanding gas infrastructure, we must ensure that it is economically advantageous to use heat pumps in new construction and when existing gas furnaces and water heaters need replacement.

Hydrogen can’t be falsely touted as the future of home heating. It’s highly problematic in existing pipelines, only feasible when mixed in relatively small quantities with polluting gas. Hydrogen other than “green” is dirty to make. We can’t afford to waste renewable energy by making an expensive product that is less efficient than the direct use of renewables. Green hydrogen makes sense primarily in niche applications such as Plug Power is developing, and potentially in transportation.

It’s time for all parties to talk honestly about how we make this challenging but essential transition. We need realistic plans to ramp up renewables more quickly while keeping fossil fuels flowing until they can be fully phased out.

Paul Fisk Latham