His debate comments about ending the oil industry make an already troubling record even worse.
In the business world, there’s a saying that past performance is the best predictor of future results. I believe that this saying holds true when it comes to the candidates for president of the United States and energy policy.
Consider the past four years under President Trump, a period during which promises made resulted in promises kept. The United States currently enjoys energy independence and security, clean air and water, abundant natural gas, and affordable prices at the pump.
But if last night’s debate is any indicator, a Biden victory would put an end to the energy prosperity the U.S. currently enjoys. In admitting to the whole country that he would do away with the American oil-and-gas industry, Biden came out as a Green New Dealer. And that means catastrophe for every American family.
Biden’s remarks last night are just the latest example of his troubling record on energy, one which goes back 47 years to when the former senator was just getting his feet wet in Washington.
Today, everyone wants to talk climate change — and Joe Biden is hailed by too many as a climate-change savior. But history tells a different story. After all, it was Biden and the Democrats who voted to pass the 1978 Fuel Use Act, a part of Jimmy Carter’s failed energy plan that caused extensive environmental damage.
In the late 1970s, the Carter administration operated under an assumption that the U.S. would soon run out of oil and gas. It was a mentality of scarcity versus abundance. In a dramatic address to the nation, Carter even warned: “Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be demanding more oil than it can produce.”
As we know today, that was just flat wrong. And yet for ten years, the Fuel Use Act mandated that American power companies turn away from clean-burning oil and natural gas, and embrace coal exclusively. Coal has 1.7 times the amount of carbon density as natural gas, so it’s undeniable that the legislation contributed to worsening our changing climate. It also helped create acid rain.
Biden and congressional Democrats stood by the legislation despite all the red flags, including a Department of Energy Environmental Impact Statement that warned about the “unavoidable environmental impacts” substituting coal for oil and gas would cause. They did this even though energy experts gave testimony about how abundant the supply of natural gas truly would be provided regulations be relaxed.
The Reagan administration eventually eliminated these policies, but after a decade of pollution, the damage had been done. The U.S. took coal-fired power plant technology and sold it all around the world, and we are still doing so today. China is currently building or planning to build more than 300 coal plants worldwide and regardless of the poor air quality already present in many of the locations.
When it comes to fracking, Biden has been a flip-flopper. He now says that while he won’t ban fracking, he also won’t permit new wells to be dug. But if new wells aren’t drilled, there certainly won’t be any fracking at a certain point. He touts his $2 trillion clean-energy plan, yet plans to edge out natural gas from the power mix within the next 15 years. The American people aren’t that naive.
America has a decision to make. Are we ready to go back to bowing to rogue regimes, paying $6 a gallon at the pump, and suffering thousands of lost jobs? Or do we double down on energy abundance and the freedoms that come as a result?
America’s past is the best predictor of our future. Bearing that in mind, Biden’s track record on energy should scare anyone that cares about the country and its future. It is a disaster.