Senator Dave McCormick wrote an op-ed for the Washington Times that says, “The more I travel across the Commonwealth, the more convinced I become of the potential Pennsylvania has to guide America’s energy future. Philadelphia Gas Works is working to export LNG through the Port of Philadelphia. Penn America Energy and the Pennsylvania Building Trades are collaborating on a $7 billion project to build a new LNG export terminal along the Delaware River in Eddystone.”

It’s a bad idea for many reasons, both economic, global, and local. The reason energy interests want the terminal is to exploit foreign markets. Natural gas can be burned or made into plastics and chemicals. If burned, it contributes to global climate change. Plastics are polluting everything because we don’t have practical ways of recycling them. So whatever happens to the gas we liquify and sell, those who profit don’t pay the long-term costs; society does.

The social economics are bad too. Cheap fossil fuels compete with renewable, non-polluting energy. So their availability hinders the growth of sustainable energy production.

Then there are the pipelines. They create long, deep scars across the landscape and introduce the risk of leaks and disasters to the neighborhoods they traverse. The pumping stations vent substantial amounts of gas, and create other damage to the neighborhoods where they are located.

Last but not least is fracking. Overseas markets increase demand and bring higher prices, which encourages more drilling. We’ve extensively documented that nothing good comes to locals from fracking.

Senator McCormick is only telling half the story, the rosy half. He’s left it to the rest of us to tell the whole story and reveal the truth. You get all the facts right and still mislead people.

Follow the money.