Under the cover of the turmoil of Massachusetts’ energy puzzle, the federal government appears to be allowing another opportunity for energy companies to turn distraction into profits.

All the talk about the wisdom of holding a diversified energy portfolio and the annual spikes in winter electric costs sounds to many like a government attempt to address economic and environmental goals responsibly.

To those with financial interests in natural gas extraction, transport, combustion and sale, it must sound like the buffet is now open.

At least one of the partners in the Access Northeast project (which includes plans to increase natural gas supply for the commonwealth by building two enormous tanks in Acushnet) is interested in a much bigger picture. To Spectra Energy, which owns the Algonquin natural gas pipeline that moves gas through our region, the Acushnet tanks appear poised to deliver a win-win, first by supporting the government goal of easing regional winter electricity rates, and second by making gas exports economically viable partly thanks to the stabilizing effects of increased regional storage.

We have no problem with profits, per se, but we want them to be responsible profits, especially in light of the vehement opposition to the Acushnet plan in and around that community.

Spectra is only one partner in the portion of the Access Northeast that includes Acushnet. Electricity generators Eversource and National Grid are the other two.

At recent information sessions on the Acushnet proposal, the electric generators have declared that the only “export” will be the distribution of natural gas to the regional plants affected by winter heating demand. Massachusetts policy makers would do well to look beyond the border of Acushnet.

After all, the U.S. Department of Energy looks far beyond the shores of Massachusetts. The DOE’s approval of Spectra’s plan to reverse the flow of gas in lines coming from Canada will allow exports through Canada, to foreign trading partners. Along with that approval, the DOE also has approved the export of natural gas out of Alaska. Alaskan exports are authorized to begin next week.

The federal policy on gas exports seems out of step with the administration’s goals on the environment. First of all, Sen. Edward Markey responded to the DOE approvals with concern over price protections for Massachusetts rate-payers who have now been thrust into an international natural gas market. Second, incentives that support the motive to expand exploitation of a fossil fuel instead of encouraging the transition to renewable sources illustrate the tremendous need to understand once again the gravity of the situation.

Centuries of burning fossil fuels has moved so much carbon out of the ground and into the atmosphere that the balance among Earth’s systems has been dramatically disturbed. Without some technological solution that returns the carbon to the Earth’s crust in a short period of time, we must accept the reality of impacts and recognize that climate stability is centuries, even millennia, in the future.

The first time anyone burned a bit of coal to power an engine to accomplish some sort of work, the environmental costs began to accrue. Those unaccounted for costs have accumulated over these centuries, and the estimation of the loss of habitat, species, human health, well being and life adds up to a deficit that dwarfs our federal deficit and national debt. Humanity has paid for its prosperity on the backs of nature and billions of human beings. Had we paid more for the goods and services that have come to define our prosperity, enabling responsible energy companies to address the costs, our standard of living as consumers would be lower (at least as defined by the consumer economy), but our well being standard of living would be much higher.

In November, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey released a report that indicated no new gas lines were required to meet the state’s winter heating and electricity needs if we would rely on energy efficiency and strategic demand. Cheap natural gas that represents more than half of a supposedly diversified portfolio should be reduced, not doubled down.

That’s not what fossil fuel energy companies and the DOE want to hear, but as long as humans keep putting carbon into the atmosphere without full accounting, we expect a continuation of a perverse motive that extracts its profits without paying all the costs. But we do pay, after all.