Renewable Energy is Our Best Answer To The Global Dangers of Fossil Fuels

In recent years, the dangers of our continued dependence on fossil fuels have centered on climate change and the staggering risks it poses to our environment today and future generations. Yet Russia’s ongoing brutal aggression in Ukraine and its impacts around the world offer a stark reminder that there are other very real, very immediate threats caused by the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. In the wake of historic energy instability driven by geopolitical forces and increasingly dire warnings from climate scientists, the only reasonable way forward is for the United States to accelerate its transition to greater energy independence through renewable energy made in America.

For generations, fossil fuels have driven violent conflicts around the world over lucrative lands and by fueling the national economies and funding the unchecked military aggression of petro-dictators like Vladimir Putin. Yet according to the fossil fuel lobby and its sympathetic lawmakers, the solution to these conflicts is somehow to deepen our reliance on fossil fuels through increased oil and gas production at home. Not only is this perspective shamelessly opportunistic – it poses an immediate danger to people of the world today as well as for generations to come.

We should expect nothing less from those who stand to profit from a continued dependence on fossil fuels. The industry simply cannot be trusted to tell the truth. For decades, major oil and gas companies have lied and deceived the public with each new threat to their bottom line. Internal documents show they knew about the realities of climate change even while continuing to fight to discredit the science. They’ve perpetuated these lies through aggressive lobbying and political donations, as well as through greenwashing and feel-good messaging that betrays the reality of their leading role in a warming planet and the disasters that come with it.

For the first time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading authority on climate change, has identified this “misinformation and rhetoric,” which it states “undermines climate sciences and disregards risk and urgency.” Continued efforts to minimize climate change and politicize climate action perpetuate a status quo that has not been sustainable for decades and poses a wide range of threats to people around the world.

It's become increasingly clear that a more economically stable and environmentally sustainable future is dependent on reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, not ramping it up. Yet pro-fossil fuel groups and legislators have brought their efforts to discredit and undermine the truth to renewable energy. Here in Pennsylvania, the nation’s second-largest gas producing state, lawmakers are making outrageous claims around the supposed cost and harms of renewable energy and creating unnecessary barriers that further delay our much-needed transition to wind and solar power.

It’s part of an established playbook that views any progress toward safer, more sustainable energy as a threat. The same playbook that looks to capitalize on the atrocities in Ukraine as an excuse to promote more oil and gas drilling and devastation on American soil.

Here is the reality: coal, oil, and methane gas are commodities to be sold on a global market to the highest bidder. As long as the United States relies on fossil fuels, it will be part of this global market and all the geopolitical realities and threats that come with it. So-called energy independence under this model is a myth. True energy independence comes only from the production of energy that can’t be bought and sold on a global scale – energy from sources like geothermal, solar, wind, hydropower, and nuclear.

Eliminating the global threats that come from fossil fuel dependence starts with eliminating the misinformation and subsidies for fossil fuels at home. It starts with embracing renewable sources of energy, rather than working to actively oppose them. It starts with recognizing that the current status quo is built on deception and puts our allies and countless people around the world at risk while threatening the very future of our civilization.