David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He has 40 years in the oil and gas business, specializing in public policy and communications.
I recorded a podcast this week in which the host told me I was an “outlier” for being willing to write the truth about the destructive nature of the Biden administration’s energy policies. Honestly, that’s one of the kindest things anyone has ever said to me.
So I guess I’ll be an exception again when I write that the idea being reconsidered by White House officials of President Biden declaring a climate emergency so he can launch a crackdown The harshness towards the domestic oil and gas industry is truly crazy. It’s the truth.
Bloomberg Thursday report Officials inside the White House, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the idea of declaring a climate emergency, first considered in 2021 and again in 2022, is again being considered. Of course, the only “emergency” is the president’s falling approval ratings among impressionable young voters, which threatens to damage his reelection chances. Declaring a climate emergency would give the president dictatorial powers to hamper domestic industry far more than his regulators and hundreds of executive orders have already attempted to do. .
According to Bloomberg sources, actions under consideration would include suspending offshore drilling, limiting oil and LNG exports, and “limiting” the industry’s ability to transport production through pipelines. and railway. Given the critical nature of the industry, it all seems like a recipe for major economic disaster.
“Ordinary Americans are certainly not asking for a climate emergency to be declared. It’s a losing team of left-wing Democratic Party activists and a shrinking elite base,” American Petroleum Association President Tim Stewart told me in an interview. “The problem is not climate, but control: Control of the entire U.S. economy, control of production, manufacturing, distribution and consumption. If you control energy, you control all of these things. That means you have control over everyone.”
Stewart noted that using emergency powers in this case would represent the same playbook used by federal, state and local governments to limit citizens’ freedoms and choices during the pandemic COVID. But for the president, it would also be a means of bolstering the support of the billionaire class that funds both the climate vigilante movement and scores of Democratic Party campaigns, including the his own re-election.
That view is echoed by Tom Pyle, president of the D.C.-based Energy Research Institute. “By now, we have become accustomed to extremely disastrous and stupid decisions from the Biden administration, but the idea of declaring a ‘climate emergency’ is itself a It’s classy. “Like the freeze on new LNG licenses, the only emergency President Biden is seeking to address in the face of this latest threat is his slide in the polls among young voters year old.”
Others I spoke to about the issue were skeptical that the White House would actually take such an extreme step in the midst of a reelection bid, but that notion actually seemed naive. After all, who could have predicted last December that the administration would halt all licensing of new LNG export facilities purely for political reasons? Who could have predicted by the end of 2021 that the president would order the withdrawal of 40% of the nation’s wartime Strategic Petroleum Reserve for no reason other than a purely political calculation to try to exert influence to the 2022 midterm elections?
Anyone who thinks such a move would be made out of a genuine, good-faith effort to somehow influence climate change needs to consider this: Demand for oil and natural gas It is, of course, a global phenomenon that will not abate just because Biden tightens the grip on US domestic business. industry. Such a crackdown would certainly send billions of dollars of capital flowing to other parts of the world, where environmental regulations are much less stringent than in the United States.
The climate vigilantes who support this crazy policy action want to ignore the fact that Earth has only one atmosphere that everyone shares. The U.S. oil and gas industry has dramatically cut emissions of both methane and CO2 even as the industry has achieved new production records. No other country on Earth can make a similar claim.
This is indeed a crazy idea, but it would be wrong to assume that it was not taken seriously and for the wrong reasons.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He has 40 years in the oil and gas business, specializing in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Organization.
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