FYI
Bela Liptak
9-14- 22
RE: Putin's New Cold War: Freeze Europe
To the Editor,
For 27 years Tom Friedman advocted the conversion to clean energy, yet today he writes as if defeating petro-Putinism would be more important than mitigating climate change and if the two goals were in conflouict. They are not, we can do both!
Putin's war is only the first energy war, others are coming and these wars will only stop when we stop using fossil fuels. Increasing fossil fuel production by building new pipelines will not help Europe, but will speed global warming. Pakistan is already under water, greenhouse gas concentration is the highest ever and 80% of our primary energy still comes from burning fossil fuels. What we need are steps that will help Europe now and fight climate change later.
This can be done by multiplying such projects as the ones already in progress. For example, Estonia will complete her gigantic LNG terminal by December or Germany will build such LNG terminals that can later be converted to handle liquid hydrogen. This way she is fighting petro-Putinism and at the same time, is preparing for the zero-carbon future. The same can be said for the trains and buses that are already fueled by green hydrogen, that is generated by free solar energy and burns into distilled water.
Béla Lipták
Author of "Post-oil Enegy Economy".
Stamford, CT