The following post is a reprint of an editorial by Emily Norton, Chapter Director of the
Massachusetts Sierra Club in The Boston Globe on July 8, 2016.
If We’re Serious About Climate Goals, LET’S WEAN OFF NATURAL GAS –
After praising the Massachusetts Senate for passing a bill that would “help the Commonwealth break its dependency on fossil fuels,” your July 5 editorial criticizes the Senate for voting — unanimously — to prohibit a pipeline tax that would force electricity customers to pay for new gas pipelines. Note that natural gas, much of it produced from fracking, is a fossil fuel, which you seem to agree we should wean ourselves off of. So your editorial doesn’t make sense.
We can either direct electric utilities to invest in renewable energy, or we can double down on fossil fuels with more gas pipelines. Only the former will help us reduce the impacts of climate change, grow local jobs, and keep more of our energy dollars here at home rather than exporting them to fossil fuel-producing parts of the world.
Climate scientists no longer consider natural gas to be a so-called bridge fuel; rather, they urge us to speed the transition to an economy powered 100 percent by renewable energy. That’s what the Senate bill sets us on a path to do, and I am grateful for the chamber’s leadership and sense of urgency.
Emily Norton, Chapter Director
Massachusetts Sierra Club
Boston
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