This is a Wall Street Journal letter to the editor about the best way to fix the Global Warming problem.

Lease operator Jeremy Jay walks through an oil-production facility in the Permian Basin near Midland, Texas, Aug. 23, 2018.

Wall Street Journal

OPINION

LETTERS

Compromise Can Promote Green Policy Goals

Our energy future will look different than its past. That transition is underway, but it doesn’t have to be a binary choice between 100% renewables or unmitigated carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

Updated July 31, 2019

Regarding Robert Bryce’s “A Reality Check for Solar and Wind” (op-ed, July 22): Simple math may show that oil and gas production is leaving solar and wind in the shade, but simple physics shows that carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels damage our climate and our future prosperity. Our energy future will look different than its past. That transition is under way, but it doesn’t have to be a binary choice between 100% renewables or unmitigated carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

Smart policy planning would protect our energy supply while also reducing the costs and risks associated with greenhouse-gas emissions. On Jan. 17 the Journal published “Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends” signed by 3,500 U.S. economists, including all living former chairs of the Federal Reserve and 15 former chairmen of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, urging immediate national action to address climate change, and calling a carbon tax “the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary.”

If the cost of pollution is included in the cost of energy, the market will efficiently shift toward cleaner forms of energy, including natural gas, renewables and nuclear. Technologies like carbon-capture utilization and storage will finally have a predictable market price to justify large-scale deployment, allowing use of fossil fuels without climate-harming emissions.

Kathy Fackler

Citizens’ Climate Lobby

Durango, Colorado