Consider the source, readers. My interest was piqued by Wednesday’s column by John Hood (“Fracking the Cause for Emissions Drop in NC”), in part, because of its above-the-fold, center-page, 1.5-inch billing. More so, it was because fracking is a relatively new extraction method, with the long-term environmental costs and benefits still being determined.

I was curious about fracking’s emission-reduction benefits, which are no doubt real on some level where fracked natural gas is burned instead of coal.

I was, however, disappointed to be so quickly reminded that I was reading an opinion piece by the author’s out-of-the-gate chiding of a Democratic governor for a lack of progress on an aspirational greenhouse-gas-reduction goal without mention of a general lack of Republican legislative support for that goal. Later came his suggestion that believers in climate change are members of a cult and hyperbolic conclusion that supporters of renewable energy are “extremists.”

What was Mr. Hood’s true motivation for writing his column? You’d have to ask him or, perhaps, the John Locke Foundation’s financial supporters.

What is mine? I don’t make a living writing agenda-driven opinion pieces. I am, however, a parent who hopes to leave the world better for my children than I found it, and that effort is complicated when columns like Hood’s presenting fossil fuel reliance as a solution and not a problem are not read with the healthy dose of skepticism they deserve.

— Cory Menees

Salisbury