An article the New York Times posted on January, 26, 2016, Climate Deal’s First Big Hurdle: The Draw of Cheap Oil, identifies the challenges in maintaining progress from the Paris Climate Change agreement. One is falling victim to cheap prices for fossil fuels right at the time these fuels are being denigrated for their impact on the planet.
We have seen this before, and we will likely see it again. Back in the late 1990’s, natural gas prices reached historic lows, and combined with deregulation, these low prices fueled a boom in building gas-fired plants, just at a time the 1997 Kyoto Agreement was being ratified without the U.S. as a signatory. Then in 2001, came the collapse of Enron and the California Electricity Crisis, with a new spike in natural gas prices.
This experience should have been enough to veer us toward a new, unified long-term energy policy though that goal still has not been realized. Perhaps one will emerge from the political season upon us; however, we must understand that history will repeat if we allow it to, and if we abandon our priorities in pursuit of today’s cheap solution, we could imperil both our climate and our economy.
