With the election now underway, Joe Biden is once again looking for votes instead of taking care of the country.
He has upset a lot of climate change and environmental activists over the last three years, so now it is time to play makeup.
Talking Points…
- Biden bans natural gas projects
- The reaction
- Analysis
Joe Biden will be looking to make headway with the green crowd to get them back behind him before the election. Climate activists have given Biden no room to spare in this, wanting him to cave to every demand and outlaw fossil fuels.
To that point, on Friday, the administration announced that numerous and significant natural gas projects were going to be put on pause while the projects were assessed for carbon emissions. The White House and Department of Energy (DOE) stated:
"As our exports increase, we must review export applications using the most comprehensive up-to-date analysis of the economic, environmental and national security considerations. This action includes a pause on pending applications for exports of U.S. natural gas as LNG to non-free trade agreement countries until the department can update the underlying analyses for authorizations.
"The U.S. is committed to affordable energy and economic opportunities for all Americans. We are committed to strengthening energy security here in the U.S. and with our allies. And we're committed to protecting Americans against climate change as we lead the world into a clean energy future."
The statement from White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi confirmed that this is a political move, as he stated:
"That's how Joe Biden leads on climate change. And when it comes to the climate crisis, we square our shoulders, we take on the challenge in front of us, we lean into the solutions and, yes, we transition globally away from fossil fuels. That is the solution, that is the strategy that the president has articulated."
The reaction to the pausing of the projects outside of climate activists was far from positive, with former FERC Chair Neil Chatterjee leading the charge. Chatterjee stated:
"I think they're really making a miscalculation here. This isn't just bad policy, it's bad politics. We made a commitment to our European allies, to Germany, that we would be there and help them. You really should not be playing politics with energy security.
"What's really frustrating from the environmental perspective is that U.S. LNG actually displaces more intense fossil sources of fuel overseas. We have a much cleaner process than the Russians do. So, not only are we providing geopolitical assets to our allies, but U.S. LNG displacing dirtier sources of fuels actually lowers global carbon emissions. And the activists seem to be just kind of brushing over that."
As I noted above, while Biden has had a very aggressive green agenda, this demographic is an all-or-nothing group. These activists have continued to put pressure on Biden at every turn, including holding protests and heckling Biden during campaign events.
Polling shows that this demographic is upset with Biden, not currently backing him, and Biden can ill afford to lose their support for the 2024 election, so he is going to make some big moves to pacify them, regardless of what it will do to our energy independence and our economy.
There is another aspect of this to consider… domestic energy investments. With this war on fossil fuels that Biden is clearly intent on winning, what fossil fuel energy companies are going to want to invest in this country, knowing full well the hourglass could run out of sand at any given moment with Democrats in charge?
Biden's agenda will cost more Americans their jobs, make us more dependent on foreign countries for energy, and put our national security at risk. A country that cannot survive on its own energy production during a conflict is doomed to failure, and that is what Joe Biden is setting us up for… complete and utter failure.
