Democrats on the House Energy & Commerce Committee have introduced a relabeled and slightly revised bill from the past and given it the inaccurate and misleading name “the CLEAN Future Act.” This bill is aimed at restricting and reducing the use of reliable energy sources, and mandating and increasing the use of unreliable energy sources. This will make energy more substantially expensive and it will reduce jobs and economic growth. Simply stated, the bill, if passed, would do a great deal more to insure that more and more of America repeats the catastrophic widespread power outages that Texas experienced last month than it will ever do to provide a “clean future” as the act’s name implies.
The CLEAN Future Act is less focused on energy policy than it is on imposing an anti-energy policy and a virulent climate focused policy aimed specifically at destroying America’s current domestic energy supplies. In other words, the goal is to make it illegal to use clean fuels like natural gas or to use any fuel based on oil, or even clean coal technology — all abundant energy sources in the US. And it wants us to transition from these reliable energy sources to unproven and unreliable energy sources in the space of a little more than a dozen years. If they get their way, be ready for dramatically more expensive electric bills and for more Texas style blackouts which can cost lives and billions in damages.
The widespread use of those natural gas, oil and coal in conjunction with innovative clean technologies have caused American air quality to dramatically improve in the last thirty years. With air quality improving, there is no need to turn the economy on its head and endanger people’s lives with poverty, power outages, and economic disruption.
Even if you buy into the idea that carbon dioxide is harmful, America’s carbon emissions are on the decline. But the truth is, carbon dioxide is a natural occurring and necessary element for life. If we removed all carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, all life would shortly die out as there would be no plant life. Humans and animals require oxygen to respirate and live. Plants require carbon dioxide to live and do photosynthesis which provides animals and humans with food. So take away the carbon dioxide and you kill off life — both animal and plant life. But as I said, even if you buy into the idea that carbon dioxide is at harmful levels (it isn’t), no serious human can hope for a planet without CO2. That would be a dead planet.
The CLEAN Future Act will punish the production and use of our most reliable energy sources, and it will dramatically raise energy costs and destroy jobs. This seems to fit well with Biden’s agenda. He may have promised a “moderate” and “unifying” agenda, but his first months in office blew the lid off the idea that there will be anything moderate or unifying about the Biden-Harris administration.
The bill is also designed to give the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of “social justice” more teeth. For example, the bill would establish an Office of Energy Equity at the Department of Energy. Americans love the idea of equality before the law and the idea that we are all created equal. Justice is a founding ideal for any nation that promotes freedom. But when you add modifiers to the word justice, you are likely not talking about justice, but actually trying to co-opt the term to suit your ulterior motives and goals. With energy policy, the goal should be to provide all of America with reliable and affordable energy. That benefits everyone — the poorest among us, need affordable energy more than anyone else and they need the jobs and opportunity that affordable energy helps create.
So if you are really interested in “energy equity” or “energy fairness,” you would focus on providing reliable energy to Americans at reliable and relatively stable and affordable prices. But if you have another agenda, you might hide it by promising greater energy equity while forcing prices dramatically higher and making the reliability of the energy sources spotty and questionable. That’s exactly what “The CLEAN Future Act” does and it is in line with the Biden-Harris Administration’s goals.
If we imposed the same truth in labelling laws on Congress that apply to food products, this law would be named, “The Make Energy Expensive and Unreliable Act.” And if truthful labeling applied to the committee names in Congress, the committee would no longer be called the Committee on Energy and Commerce, but would be renamed the Committee Against Energy & Commerce.