Up until the Trump presidency, politicians regularly talked about the need to make America energy independent. That talk has stopped, largely because the goal has been reached. The U.S. is now a net energy exporter, thanks almost entirely to the development of new technologies that allow us to find fossil fuels where they could not be found before.
The oil and natural gas boom brought about by fracking has not only ended the nation’s reliance on crude oil imports, it also put an end to the domestic coal industry. As a result, U.S. carbon emissions are down significantly, lower even than the targets fixed in the international Paris Climate Accord from which President Donald J. Trump withdrew the nation shortly after entering office.
Rather than cheering these developments, former Vice President Joe Biden wants to bring them to an end. He wants the nation to be depended on synthetic and renewable fuel substitutes that are not yet developed and wind and solar power that is expensive to build, even more expensive to maintain in good working order, and which has proven harmful to birds and other wildlife – all to appease Luddite environmentalists who fill his campaign coffers with money and his campaign offices with activists.
To what should be his shame, Biden can’t be clear with the American public about what he has in mind for U.S. energy production save for statements about his plan to end our reliance on fossil fuels to heat and cool our homes and businesses and power our factories within several decades.
The technology to do all this is unproven, at least at the commercial-scale required to produce the base power load needed. Yet he dismisses technologies like fracking that are proven as environmentally harmful and unnecessary.
Contrary to what he’s said while debating Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden has said repeatedly he would end fracking in the United States. He’s been caught on tape more than once making this promise. In a July 2019 interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Mr. Biden said he would eliminate fracking. “Would there be any place for fossil fuels including coal and fracking in a Biden administration?” she asked. Mr. Biden responded, “No, we would work it out. We would make sure it’s eliminated.”
In his October 22 debate with Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden again promised he would shut down the entire American oil industry. Here’s this, from the transcript, so you can read it yourself:
President Donald Trump: Would you close down the oil industry?
Former Vice President Joe Biden: By the way, I have a transition from the old industry, yes.
President Donald Trump: Oh, that’s a big statement.
Former Vice President Joe Biden: I will transition. It is a big statement.
President Donald Trump: That’s a big statement.
Former Vice President Joe Biden: Because I would stop.
Moderator Kristen Welker (NB): Why would you do that?
Former Vice President Joe Biden: Because the oil industry pollutes, significantly.
Whether or not he used the word “ban” is irrelevant. If he can’t ban it, he’ll tax and regulate and sue it out of existence by raising the costs involved with it to a level when it no longer makes economic sense to do it.
If Mr. Biden’s plan prevails, it won’t just devastate the economies of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, and it won’t just send millions of Americans whose jobs depend on the fracking industry onto the unemployment lines, it will produce higher prices at the pump for every American while making the nation once again reliant on foreign oil imports coming from politically unstable parts of the world. If that weren’t enough, the biggest beneficiary of the Biden plan will be Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who just can’t wait to get the rest of the world, particularly eastern Europe, dependent once again on his country’s crude and natural gas.
No amount of spin or clean up from Mr. Biden or his team can explain away what he’s promised to do. The former Vice President said “Yes” when the president asked if he would close down the oil industry. Mr. Biden’s stance towards almost everything that goes into U.S. energy independence shows him to be a job killer, a friend to the oil sheiks and eastern European oligarchs and others who’d like nothing better to have their knees on the necks of U.S. industry by controlling the nation’s supply of energy.