by Carrie Sheffield
You’d think after achieving $5 a gallon nationwide gas prices and gutting domestic oil and gas producers, America’s environmental extremists would be elated and emboldened. But President Joe Biden’s energy policy is so incoherent, even Green New Deal socialists are frustrated, according to reporting by Politico’s Zack Colman.
“The climate advocates who cheered President Joe Biden’s arrival at the White House last year are preparing to give up on Washington,” Colman writes. “Instead, environmentalists and many of their Democratic allies are starting to shift their focus to state capitals as the places to press for action on climate change — going back to a strategy that they employed with some success during the Trump era.”
Green activists are apparently shocked and angry at their failure to get massive subsidies and payouts from the doomed Build Back Better bill. The firewall against that plan was coal state Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Why should these activists be surprised that a moderate Dem would balk at decimating his own constituents? That’s entitled arrogance in the extreme.
The Biden administration’s destructive energy goals aren’t even subtle. Mark Mazur, who left the Treasury Department in September, said the quiet part out loud, as Bloomberg reported: “We don’t want lower prices for fossil-fuel buyers. We prefer higher prices,” he said about possible gas-tax holidays and how this “undercuts the administration’s climate change goals.”
Team Biden is pursuing means to harm U.S. oil and gas producers while simultaneously begging foreign despots in countries like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for more carbon-based oil and gas. Biden’s doublespeak is frustrating to both sides of the energy debate domestically.
And during his recent European NATO trip, Biden trotted out his favorite scapegoat for his own failed domestic policies: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The reason why gas prices are up is because of Russia, Russia Russia,” Biden said at a press conference at the NATO Summit, where he called again for a gas tax holiday and Russian oil price caps. It’s no wonder that domestic anti-oil rabble rousers are frustrated if Biden describes himself as a hobbled actor whose fate is dictated by an overseas despot.
Biden completely ignores the more than a year of botched policymaking by his team prior to the Ukrainian invasion, from lifting sanctions against the NordStream 2 pipeline to canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and denying oil and gas drilling permits. NASDAQ reported how gas prices were already rising prior to the invasion.
The Washington Post admitted “Americans aren’t really buying into the ‘Putin price hike.’” It’s no wonder Biden’s approval ratings are plummeting.
Meanwhile on Biden’s America Last campaign, Reuters reported that rather than selling these barrels to American consumers, “more than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency reserves release to lower domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month.”
Eco activists are also upset by a recent Supreme Court ruling reining in the separation of powers violations by the Environmental Protection Agency over greenhouse gas regulation. Even the Greenies know Biden’s team needs to work on its competence.
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Carrie Sheffield is a senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Voice.
Photo “Joe Biden Delivers Remarks Virtually During the Leaders Summit on Climate Session” by The White House.
