Editor,
Bill Merrill’s June 26 letter on natural gas was well-worded but incompletely considered. Similar to Don Brunell’s June 4 column, Merrill detailed the benefits of methane while ignoring the downsides. The downsides of methane are very serious, so these writers do our community no good pretending they don’t exist.
Let’s agree that “natural gas” is a marketing term, like “clean coal.” Industry wordsmithing is intended to sound non-threatening, but many chemicals occur naturally that we don’t want around. Nobody wants “natural radon” in our basements or “natural arsenic” in our drinking water.
To be sure, our gas furnaces and stoves produce fewer co-pollutants than coal, gasoline or diesel machines, but operating any of these produces carbon dioxide, of which our atmosphere already has too much. The first thing to do to get out of any hole is stop digging.
Methane by itself is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. It has a shorter half-life in the atmosphere than CO2 but packs quite a wallop while it’s around. Each molecule causes 85 times more planetary warming than a CO2 molecule over a 20-year period and roughly 30 times more when measured over a century.
This would be immaterial if all the methane drilled was burned, but unfortunately the fossil fuel industry has been an irresponsible one. The industry flares massive amounts of methane as “waste” when convenient to them, sometimes even venting methane without burning it first, in the pursuit of more lucrative liquid oils. Large leak plumes have been documented at methane drill sites, and leaks in methane pipe networks are common.
The industry has fought efforts to regulate these leaks, preferring sloppy practices over transparency and competent engineering.
Fortunately we have alternatives. The wind is always blowing somewhere; the sun is always shining somewhere. A well-designed grid, with storage options and demand-supply matching will accommodate our switch from gas appliances to electric.
Current state law directs 100 percent carbon-neutral electricity by 2030 and carbon-free generation by 2045.
The only reason gas appliances are currently cheaper to use is because people aren’t paying the full costs. Users push costs of their pollution onto other people. If methane were priced to include its lifetime cost, electricity would be the cheaper choice by far.
Renewable electricity is honest energy; it doesn’t burden the unborn with costs we’re too cheap to pay; it doesn’t say “look away.”
The unforgiving laws of chemistry and physics make carbon dioxide a poisoned apple, as our heat wave just reminded us. Let’s close the era of “natural gas.” Governments should amend building codes to prevent new gas hookups; homeowners should choose only electric appliances, and cars, when buying new.
Future people, and our consciences, will think better of us as we do.
Bob Hallahan
Oak Harbor
