Carbon emissions from the power sector are now the lowest they have been since 1985.

It is amazing how fast carbon emissions from U.S. electricity production have decreased due to the major shift from coal to natural gas. And due to technical advances in shale gas, the cost of producing natural gas keeps falling.

For decades, base-load power generators — mainly coal and nuclear power — dominated the power industry. Today, however, the share of the nation’s electric-generating capacity supplied by natural gas is steadily rising. Demand for coal for electric generation fell by 22 percent from 2011 to 2015, while power-sector demand for natural gas rose by 32 percent.

Natural gas has shown the ability to inject real progress in carbon mitigation, while providing backup power for intermittent solar and wind energy. In fact, the amazing growth in shale production has led cheaper natural gas to provide a much bigger impact on the drop in carbon emissions than the deployment of renewables.

Investors strongly prefer natural gas, and it’s not hard to figure out why. Despite the availability of federal tax credits and portfolio standards mandating the use of renewables in 29 states, solar and wind combined supply just 9 percent of the nation’s electricity.

Think about the benefits to U.S. consumers from the availability of cheap natural gas. Many more Americans now work for manufacturing plants that rely on natural gas, transforming large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. And increasing production of natural gas explains why the economies of Texas and New Mexico, among others, are booming.

While inexpensive gas has spurred economic growth and reduced the carbon footprint from electricity generation, it has some collateral benefits as well. It has led to emissions reductions across the board, making an impact on the reduction of mercury, particulates, and sulfur dioxide.

Just as the remarkable rise in U.S. oil production has checked OPEC’s power, the investment in natural gas has become a geopolitical game changer. Exports of liquefied natural gas has been good news for the world. European countries such as Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine now have an alternative to Russian gas, weakening Russia’s grip on their economies.

And LNG exports to Asia are enabling China, Japan, and India to burn less coal. Exports of LNG nearly quadrupled in 2017 to 700 billion cubic feet, according to the Energy Information Administration. As LNG shipments to ports around the world increase, making it possible to shut down more coal plants, governments are betting that global carbon emissions will decline.

Some environmental groups associated with the campaign to keep fossil fuels in the ground are trying to sabotage the shale gas revolution. But their reckless argument that solar and wind alone can prevent the worst effects of climate change does not have any basis in fact.

The U.S. “greens” are lobbying states to impose restrictions on the use of hydraulic fracturing. For that matter, they are trying to block the construction of new pipelines needed to transport gas from where it’s being produced to markets where it’s needed. They should know that these actions could backfire, since both solar and wind need natural gas as a backup fuel because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Gas, easy to turn on and off, is a necessary partner to renewable electricity.

Nor is there any truth to the claim that gas companies are not committed to reducing emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Methane emissions from natural gas production are down 14 percent since 1990, even as natural gas output has increased more than 50 percent over the same period. The world’s biggest oil and gas companies have pledged to cut their methane emissions by one-fifth, and they are making increasing use of drones and robots to detect and fix leaks in pipes and valves.

Even as environmentalists pound the climate change drum, they seem more interested in promoting wind and solar power for their own sake than in finding cost-effective solutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr. J. Winston Porter is an energy and environmental consultant based in Atlanta. Earlier, he was an Environmental Protection Agency assistant administrator in Washington, D.C.