The crisis “has the given industry a great talking point,” said Kathy Hipple, a finance professor at the MBA in Sustainability program at Bard College and a research fellow at the Ohio River Valley Institute, a nonprofit think tank that focuses on oil and gas. But the industry misses the point that “we’re overly dependent on fossil fuels,” she said.

For one, experts are in agreement that nations around the world need to stop approving new coal-fired power plants, and new oil and gas fields, to avert the most catastrophic effects of climate change, Professor Hipple said. “Does anyone want to continue to be dependent on oligarchs in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Canada’s oil, a handful of private companies in the United States? To my mind, that’s not resilient,” she said.
Editors’ Picks

16 Recipes for Tiny, Tricky Kitchens

The Disappearing World of Wolfgang Tillmans

Is It OK to Take a Law-Firm Job Defending Climate Villains?
Continue reading the main story

Environmental groups criticized the industry’s logic. “It’s pretty rich for the oil and gas industry to talk about how reliable fossil fuels are when any big storm that happens, any time a war pops up, their reliability is thrown into question,” said Nathaniel Stinnett, founder and executive director of the Environmental Voter Project, a group that mobilizes voters in elections. “Wars aren’t fought over solar energy. You don’t see these huge price spikes in clean energy,” he said.