Letters: No time for nostalgia for fossil fuels when fragile environment is at risk

Lately, The Times-Picayune and The Advocate have been doing an excellent job of chronicling Louisiana’s growing strength in producing clean energy, showing, for example, how businesses have stepped up to adapt techniques of environmentally harmful offshore oil production to wind energy production.

You have also highlighted the growing local movement of people working to make our communities more energy resilient, by creating solar energy clusters, for example.

All the more reason that it is no occasion to gloat if the crisis in Ukraine could force Louisiana further toward less healthy forms of energy production. It’s not the time for nostalgia for the Keystone XL pipeline, which is designed to carry oil, or to encourage expanded production of natural gas, which, while better than other fossil fuels, still emits the dangerous gas methane.

What’s threatening us is a sad setback, not a moment of triumph, or even a useful lesson in “energy economics.” There’s a fragile democracy in danger, and as we look to support it, we should not add harm to the fragile environment that supports us all.

CHRISTINA ALBERS

writing coach

New Orleans