It’s almost as if the Democrats want to lose bigly in the upcoming midterm elections. Congressional Democrats are urging President Joe Biden to invoke emergency powers to pursue their climate change agenda since they have been unsuccessful in passing legislation to that effect. Along with moving towards renewable energy, they also want the president to place even more restrictions on fossil fuel development at a time when gas prices are going through the roof.
Yeah, that sounds like a winning idea, doesn’t it?
The Washington Examiner reported:
The nearly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus released a slate of policy recommendations for Biden to pursue on Thursday, which call on him to use executive action to deal with a list of topics his “Build Back Better” agenda sought to address, including the development of more green energy technologies and placement of restrictions on new fossil fuel production.
The executive action agenda calls for Biden to declare a national climate emergency, as well as to employ the Defense Production Act, which both Biden and former President Donald Trump have done under the aegis of COVID-19 to increase ventilator and vaccine supplies in order to build more renewable energy technologies, such as solar panels and wind turbines.
The proposal also asks Biden to reinstate a ban on crude oil exports and to prohibit new fossil fuel leases on federal lands and waters. This is the latest in a series of attempts on the part of progressive Democrats to salvage parts of Biden’s Build Back Better Act, which is currently dead in the water.
However, not all Democrats appear to be on board with the idea. Indeed, it seems that at least some have given up on imposing anything meaningful from Build Back Better. Earlier this week, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin indicated that Democratic leadership isn’t invested in reviving the issue.
“I’ve been burned by this stove enough times,” he said. “I’m not going to grab it another time.”
Durbin’s remarks elicited criticism from environmentalists. Jamaal Raad, head of Evergreen Action, said his statement constituted an “abdication of leadership in a moment where Democrats need to prove that they can deliver.”
But Raad seems to be mistaken if he believes this is what the public wants Democrats to “deliver.”
Indeed, the results of a Pew Research poll published earlier this month reveal that while a majority of Americans support a move towards renewable energy, most do not favor abandoning fossil fuels. The report explained:
The new Pew Research Center survey of 10,237 U.S. adults conducted from Jan. 24 to 30, 2022, finds that 69% of U.S. adults prioritize developing alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar, over expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas. The same share (69%) favors the U.S. taking steps to become carbon neutral by 2050, a key component of President Joe Biden’s climate and energy policy agenda.
A relatively small share of Americans (31%) believe the U.S. should phase out the use of oil, coal and natural gas completely; far more (67%) say the country should use a mix of fossil fuel and renewable energy sources. Officials are considering ways to remove carbon emissions from the atmosphere through tree plantings as well as carbon capture and storage techniques.
The poll was conducted just before the situation with Ukraine and Russia heated up. It seems likely that most Americans would not support a wholesale move to green energy while America is still not energy independent. They simply do not wish to do away with fossil fuels altogether.
As RedState’s Bonchie pointed out:
To ban all oil drilling on public lands would not only dramatically raise the cost of attainable energy, but it would also lead to dirtier drilling in other parts of the world, controlled by tyrants like Vladimir Putin and the Iranian Mullahs. What exactly would that do for the “climate”? Is the argument that drilling in the United States is somehow worse than in Saudi Arabia?
I’ve argued previously that if Democrats were taking the issue of skyrocketing gas prices seriously, they would not be touting green energy as the solution to this problem. They would be seeking ways to become less reliant on other nations for fossil fuels while moving towards renewable energy sources. Most know that it will take decades for the United States to get to a point where it is using renewable technologies as a primary energy source.
Instead of allowing the nation to drill for its own oil while it pursues methods that would make America less reliant on fossil fuels, they have turned this into an either/or proposition instead of both/and. But this comes as no surprise, right? The elites pushing for this are not affected by higher gas prices as the ordinary plebes, are they?
