Fossil Fuels

Coverage of the offshore wind power legislation has missed one key point ("O'Malley wind plan meets resistance" March 24). The cost of wind power will remain constant over time. Because the wind is free, the price of electricity from wind turbines will not go up and down like a seesaw every time the market for fossil fuels has a hiccup. We have been gambling with our energy prices for too long by remaining overly dependent on fossil fuels and failing to develop alternative sources of power.

I appreciate James McGarry's attempt to inject some common sense into the discussion of climate change, and I agree with many of the actions he proposes ("Climate change? Forget it," Nov. 14). However, these actions presume that all parties agree that climate change is caused by human activities — specifically, by burning fossil fuels. Although the science on this point is quite firm, the skeptics continue to deny that climate change has anything to do with human activities.

The Wild West scene playing out in western Pennsylvania holds warnings for Maryland on the need to manage a precious, finite resource like shale gas with great care. If you haven't heard about this energy source yet, you will soon. Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and other Appalachian states all have a rich vein of Marcellus shale, buried thousands of feet underground. Locked in the shale is a huge quantity of natural gas. Combining two technologies — hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling — allows energy companies to free these valuable reserves.

With the November midterms past, scores of Democratic congressmen are preparing themselves to join the other 14.8 million unemployed Americans. This shift poses new challenges, but it also presents new opportunities. Just as striking as what Democrats accomplished in this productive, albeit controversial, legislative session is what they did not accomplish. In particular I am referring to climate change. If ever there was a time for a sweeping legislative package that tackles carbon emissions to come out of Washington, this was it. With the most liberal U.S. government in decades, we still did not do it. Now, maybe you think that climate change is a hoax and that we dodged a bullet by dropping the bill, or maybe you think that climate change will kill us all and that the do-nothings in Congress screwed up again.

The photo in the Baltimore Sun on May 1 of the white gannet covered in brown oil from the spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a casualty of an invasion, one caused by our relentless desire for cheap energy and willful ignorance of the consequences. A man who earns his living in Louisiana described being able to smell the oil as it approached the coastline, the destroyer of everything he knows and loves. The invader represents an addict who up to now has shown no interest in weaning off of oil. Oil "independence" still means using oil. And the hurricane season starts in less than a month.

China overtook the United States for the first time last year in the race to invest in wind, solar and other sources of so-called "clean energy," according to a comprehensive report that raises questions of American competitiveness in a booming global market. U.S. clean-energy investments approached $19 billion last year, according to a report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, a little more than half the Chinese total of nearly $35 billion. Five years ago, China's investment in clean energy was just $2.5 billion.

After overcoming a rocky year that included a near-bankruptcy and a political and regulatory minefield to close a nuclear joint venture, Constellation Energy Group is focused on growing its alternative energy resources, reviving a nuclear industry in the United States and acquiring more fossil-fuel plants. In a 45-minute interview Wednesday at his corner office overlooking the Inner Harbor, Constellation Chairman and Chief Executive Mayo A. Shattuck III said the Baltimore company has moved past the financial troubles that had threatened its very existence last fall.

It doesn't take a world-class bargain-hunter to recognize that the price of anything, from groceries to electronics, is impossible to assess without considering hidden costs. Like that big-screen TV? Better ask about the added cost of cables and digital sound. A home listed below market price can seem great - until repairs to the cracked foundation, faulty wiring and leaky plumbing are factored in. Yet for decades, the U.S. has embraced an energy policy blithely ignorant of the true price tag of driving our highways and providing electricity to our homes.

President Obama on Sunday called a House-passed energy bill "an extraordinary first step" toward halting global warming and reducing the use of fossil fuels, but he expressed reservations about a controversial provision that would slap tariffs on imports from countries that do not similarly crack down on greenhouse gas emissions. He predicted that the measure would spark innovation and jobs, and that its costs to consumers would fall well short of critics' warnings. "What seems contentious now is going to seem like common sense in hindsight," he told reporters in the Oval Office.