That popping sound you hear is the empty heads of environmentalists exploding.
Joe Biden promised his radical green supporters in February 2020, just before the New Hampshire primary, “And by the way, no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.”
“Period” apparently has an expiration date. On Friday, the Biden administration announced it would resume selling leases for new oil and gas drilling on public lands, although the acreage approved for development wouldn’t increase and the royalties companies pay to drill will go up for the first time in 100 years.
It’s a political stunt by Biden to assure the American people that he’s not really a green nutcase who wants you and your family to freeze to death in winter. The move is supposed to show Biden’s concern about the high fuel prices he caused by deliberately promoting and implementing policies that drove up the cost of a gallon of gas — policies he carefully and consciously developed to save us from global warming.
But Biden’s moratorium on drilling ran into a legal thicket when a federal judge in New Orleans issued an injunction stopping it in response to 15 energy-producing states suing to prevent it.
Allowing more drilling on federal land will not add one single drop of gasoline to your gas tank or lower the price of gas at the pump by a single penny. But as political theater, it’s boffo.
C. Jeffrey Eshelman, chief operating officer at the Independent Petroleum Association of America, a trade group, took issue with the timing of the release late in the afternoon on Good Friday and Passover.
“This administration has begged for more oil from foreign nations, blames American energy producers for price gouging and sitting on leases,” Mr. Eshelman said. “Now, on a late holiday announcement, under pressure, it announces a lease sale with major royalty increases that will add uncertainty to drilling plans for years.”
Biden could be doing a lot more to boost U.S. energy production, but his goal is not to increase the supply of oil. Now, he wants to look like he wants to increase the supply. That’s a big difference.
The American Exploration and Production Council, which represents independent producers, noted that the Obama administration had held dozens of lease sales by this point in its tenure.
“While today’s announcement is a step in the right direction, to really unleash American energy the Biden administration should continue to hold ongoing lease sales pursuant to the Mineral Leasing Act, issue permits more expeditiously and provide consistent regulatory certainty,” Anne Bradbury, the group’s chief executive, said in a statement.
Related: Canadian Official Offers the U.S. Plenty of Oil From ‘Right Next Door’
Meanwhile, the green hysterics were beside themselves. They see the move to open federal lands to drilling again as a betrayal. And — naturally — you’ll never guess who will be impacted the most by this action.
The Western Environmental Law Center noted that “the communities most at risk from new fossil fuel extraction are primarily Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples, people of the global majority, and those on the frontlines of fossil fuel industry expansion. These are the same communities that turned out in record numbers to get Biden elected in 2020 and who have since been urging Biden to use his executive authority to fulfill his campaign promise and ban new federal fossil fuel projects.”
Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity, argued that “the Biden administration’s claim that it must hold these lease sales is pure fiction and a reckless failure of climate leadership.”
It just can’t be an issue of importance without the racism angle. And when you add the threat of global warming, it makes it a crisis.
In truth, Biden’s opposition to all fossil fuels and his hatred of all energy production will be disappeared down the memory hole by the media. Reminding people how we got into this mess in the first place just can’t happen. Far better to blame Putin than Biden for high gas prices.
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