A letter to the editor, published in this newspaper Feb. 2, voices disdain for President Obama’s proposal to close various loopholes in the tax code. The letter splices this issue with the administration’s effort to end tax breaks for big energy. The two issues — tax loopholes and tax breaks — are separate problems, but equally deserve our attention.

There is no disagreement in Congress that tax loopholes, with all their ambiguity, should be eliminated. The tax breaks for the energy sector are simply unnecessary. Despite what the writer implies, our economy is much stronger and big energy doesn’t need any help.

Now, as we’ve all noticed, gas prices have fallen to an abnormally low level. The crux of the argument is that an increase in taxes for big energy will result in higher prices at the pump for all of us. Good, low gas prices encourage consumers to drive more, effectively resulting in more pollution. Now is the perfect opportunity to consider the price of our carbon footprint and that will no doubt require energy prices to rise in order to reduce consumption.

As an economics major, I feel obligated to muse upon the complexities of energy policy. But who really cares about the economics of it all when climate change threatens the future of our posterity? After all, what economy will we have without a livable planet?

Shouldn’t the resulting sympathies for future generations create opposition to the very cause of those sympathies? Big energy doesn’t need our tax breaks and it certainly doesn’t deserve them. In economics, the most direct way to address a negative externality is to tax it and that is the reality of our reconciliation.  If this causes increased unemployment and an economic slump — I highly doubt the economic factuality of that prediction — so be it.

It is common to label the consumption of fossil fuels as an addiction. Analogies often fail me, but gas is without doubt a drug. With great reluctance, we have tried to wean ourselves off of the nozzle, but the progress has been far too slow. Oftentimes, an addict requires the intervention of third parties in the quest for healing. Perhaps, as addicts, we need an intervention.

Our intervention, the sit-down talk that now seems inevitable, will arrive in two forms. The first will arrive as a calm composed voice calling from the dark tumultuous riot that proclaims the two-sidedness of a one-sided fact. That voice is of the climatologists, biologists, meteorologists and all the other “-ists.” The second voice will be that of Mother Nature in all her fury.

The pushers of indiscriminate destruction are unjustifiably angry at the Obama administration’s effort to combat climate change, declaring “open season” on big energy, and those wishing to stabilize our condition are justifiably angry at those who stand in the way. Nevertheless, both sentiments appear equally justified for the sake of evenness. Politics seems to offer up the capitulation of fact to interest and morals to profit.

As I said in the Iowa State Daily less than a year ago, by allowing the discussion of science by interest-driven and non-scientific demagogues, we lose our sense of what is true in the world, or at least the device by which we can decide what is true and what is not. Instead, truth is spun to fit popular narratives and political interests. For instance, conservative commentator Sarah Elizabeth Cupp once thrust upon science advocate and former engineer “Bill Nye the Science Guy” this notion that scientists are “bullies” and the reports on climate change are mere “scare tactics.”

However, science itself is oppressed by reality and therefore is in no position to bully. That shows how much of the discussion has been eroded away. Scientists are now perceived as “bullies” when they report facts. Those who side with Cupp think that scientists are deceiving everyone or perhaps that there is some devious plot behind their claims.

Nothing could be further from the truth and this form of denial gives us a new and profound understanding of addiction.