I’m not surprised that Ed Cross again is trying to defend the oil and gas industry as good stewards of the environment and with the importance of its products to our way of life (“Petroleum: Commodity essential to our life”, December 6). The industry has a vested interest in maintaining our dependence on fossil fuels and debunking their role in causing climate change. Exxon’s executives have known for nearly 40 years that burning fossil fuels was the primary cause of the climate change we’re experiencing today, but chose to sow doubt on peer-reviewed research done by climate scientists and misinform the public about the issue (www.goo.gl/xF7XUW).

Wouldn’t it be better to formulate your opinion on human-caused climate change based on research conducted by climate scientists published in peer-reviewed journals, rather than misleading information provided by the fossil-fuel industry from studies it paid for and published in journals disseminated by organizations with a political agenda?

Climate change is a complex subject for those of us who aren’t climate scientists. If you want to learn more about climate change, check out the series of easy-to-understand 6-minute videos at www.goo.gl/NPxuQG by Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University. Or read the 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Synthesis Report Summary for Policy Makers (www.goo.gl/iFNBhb). To see the effects of climate change around the world, watch Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary, “Before the Flood.”

The options for addressing climate change don’t have to be regulatory like the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan. The Carbon Fee and Dividend is a market-based proposal designed to price fossil fuels to account for their health, environmental, and economic costs (www.goo.gl/XRh899).

Helen Hands, Hays