Colorado is ground central in a crusade to end world poverty by 2050. The driving force is Liberty Energy, a Denver-based oil and gas company, where ending poverty has become an obsession.

As a state known for advocating social responsibility — at universities, think tanks and nonprofits — Liberty CEO Chris Wright and his team have established the Bettering Human Lives Foundation.

It promotes an economic development approach to deliver clean fuels and cooking equipment to households choking on deadly emissions from wood, dung, garbage, tires and anything else that burns.

“The last two centuries of increased energy access have more than doubled global human life expectancy and dramatically shrunk severe poverty,” Wright said. “Yet, only about a billion lucky people live highly energized lives.”

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Millions of the other 7 billion linger on fewer calories and in worse conditions than Colorado’s homeless.

Although poverty declined for a century, a recent uptick correlates with mandates obstructing oil, gas and nuclear energy.

As Wright documents in his new free book, “Bettering Human Lives,” 80% of Americans worked in agriculture two centuries ago. That number has declined to 1.7%, yet Americans consume 50% more calories than 100 years ago.

Oil and gas and the shale revolution — which Wright has advanced — are the reason we produce so much more with so much less. Every piece of modern farming equipment — including all-electric tractors — depends on oil and gas.

We might be centuries, if ever, from changing this. Wright would know. His company has been adding electric equipment and trucks to its fleet to reduce noise. Without oil and gas, the trucks and their batteries are not possible.

Along with increasing food production and distribution, oil and gas facilitate advancements in medicine. Without them, we would not have hospitals, syringes, medications or the masks and gowns used by 65 million health workers.

The United States is the world’s leading exporter of traditional fuels. Energy trades globally, so obstructing production kills abroad.

Given this knowledge, we should stop the Environmental Protection Agency for further obstructing production. The agency in March commandeered methane regulations from oil- and gas-producing states.

Like other excessive interference in production, this will raise energy costs, reduce supplies and exacerbate human suffering.

Texas, Oklahoma and 24 other states are suing the EPA to roll back the regulations. Absent from the suit is Colorado, the country’s fifth-largest oil and gas producer.

Colorado has the country’s strictest methane standards, giving Attorney General Phil Weiser rationale to sit this out. He should reconsider. The regulations will obstruct production of the 96.3% of domestic production outside Colorado, hampering efforts to better human lives.

The EPA — which Gov. Jared Polis calls “awful, just awful, awful, awful, awful” will exacerbate suffering and death among the 800 million who live on less than $1.90 a day.

To think globally and act locally, Colorado should challenge the EPA’s latest affront to state sovereignty. One cannot read Wright’s new book without knowing that excessive regulations kill — right now, not in some hypothetical world that might get 3 degrees warmer by 2100.

As a state sitting on massive energy reserves, Colorado has a social obligation to share the wealth by extracting and transporting it. Ending starvation, and “bettering human lives,” means ending energy poverty — regardless of political fashion trends of dubious value.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board