Wind and solar energy won’t fuel violence

In recent weeks, we’ve watched with horror as Russian troops have invaded Ukraine and committed one atrocity after another against innocent civilians. The invasion has triggered one of the worst humanitarian crises in Europe since World War II.

Oil and gas supply and revenue are weapons used by Russian oligarchs and criminals, and our dependence on oil and gas is a threat to our national security.

It is long past time to take away these weapons, which are subsidizing the war, by accelerating our transition to clean energy.

Not driven by altruism or patriotism, the oil and gas industry may be driving up energy costs by prioritizing stock buybacks and shareholder payouts over efforts to make the cost of oil more affordable for consumers.

Even worse, the industry is using the war in Ukraine and the economic hardships many Americans are facing as pretexts for demanding more federal oil and gas leases and permits than it already has. And it has a mountain of them.

Currently, the oil and gas industry is sitting on more than 9,000 unused permits. There’s nothing stopping companies from using those permits and drilling now on public lands. Of the more than 26 million acres of public lands leased to the oil and gas industry, nearly 13.9 million (or 53 percent) of those acres are sitting unused.

The industry’s demand for more oil and gas leases and permits appears all the more audacious when you consider:

◆ U.S. oil production is nearing an all-time high.

◆ The Biden administration already has approved more new leases in its first year than the Trump administration did in its first three.

◆ While 90 percent of domestic production occurs on non-federal lands, there is more oil flowing from federal lands now than at any point since at least 2003.

◆ The fact is, we will not achieve true energy independence — reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy delivered across the country — as long as we keep putting ourselves at the mercy of the oil and gas industry and the volatile global market it’s hitched to.

Instead of using this international crisis to continue enriching oil and gas executives and making ourselves more dependent on fossil fuels, we should instead be recommitting ourselves to renewable energy sources. Only then will we achieve true energy independence, have domestic control over the price of the energy we use, and stop empowering the likes of Russia and other petrostates capable of inflicting the sort of devastation we’re seeing in Ukraine.

Oil and gas causes violence, war and climate catastrophe.

Susan Martin is chair of the Rio Grande Chapter, Sierra Club. A Santa Fe resident since 1983, she has worked as attorney for the U.S. House of Representatives, Energy and Commerce Committee, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, as well as planner director at the former Environmental Improvement Division of the New Mexico Department of Health.