There is now genuine pushback against Joe Biden’s ESG policies as well as his administration’s misguided “Green New Deal” energy policies to the point that the president’s re-election prospects are in serious doubt. The incoherence of the former and the expense of the latter has gotten most Americans angry at Biden and left them with the feeling that the situation we’re in didn’t have to happen.
Biden will no longer be able to use the pandemic as an excuse for anything — certainly not the inflation that is still nearly three times higher today than the day he took office. Nor can he blame Republicans for sky-high energy prices when he has deliberately set out to destroy the fossil fuel market to save the earth and protect the universe — supposedly.
In 2021, Joe Biden set about dismantling U.S. energy infrastructure. A year later, he was panicking after the Russians invaded Ukraine. He ended up releasing 180 million barrels of crude oil (BBLS) from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — a move that drained more than a third of our reserves. We weren’t at war or dealing with a natural disaster; we were dealing with the political disaster of Biden’s failed energy policies.
Energy prices rose 33% over the last two and a half years while grocery prices rose 20%.
Related: The Biden Administration Orders a 20-Year Oil Leasing Ban Around Chaco Canyon
Donald Trump, in an appearance on The Sean Hannity Show, had the overall story basically right. “So, we were energy independent,” he said. “Think of it, three years ago, and what people don’t know is that we have — I call it liquid gold, because it’s gold. It’s better than gold — We have liquid gold under our feet, more than any other nation, more than Saudi Arabia, more than Russia. We’re energy independent.”
“Within six months, we would have been energy dominant, and we were going to sell energy to Europe and lots of other places,” Trump went on. “And we’re going to make so much money doing it because it’s such a big world, you know, it’s such a big business. It’s all-encompassing. And that’s what started the inflation. I mean, the energy we stopped drilling, and all of a sudden gasoline’s going up to $5 or $6 a gallon in a car.”
It’s not clear what Trump would have done when Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe began to run out of oil. I suspect he would have given arms to Ukraine, although less than Biden has sent, and NATO would have been forced to send more. And I think that Trump would have made a more forceful attempt to get both sides to the bargaining table.
There is far less support for arms to Ukraine today than in the early days of the war. An AP-NORC poll found 60% support for selling arms to Ukraine in the first month of the war. That number is 48% now and dropping.
Biden’s policies have created weakening energy independence, dropping support for Ukraine, and now, pushback against ESG corporate governance.
There’s even some more good news: The scourge of ESG may be coming to an end. ESG is short for environmental, social, and corporate governance. It is a left-wing rallying cry embodying radical climate change as well as far-left investment and even cultural issues.
At two recent shareholder meetings, for ExxonMobil and Chevron, ESG supporters got whupped. Shareholders defeated a bunch of proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, put out new reports on climate benchmarks, and disclose oil spill risks. Last year, those proposals were very popular.
Incidentally, similar climate proposals were defeated at the annual meetings for BP and Shell. Big investment companies like Vanguard and Blackrock have pulled back. SEC regulatory proposals that would practically dictate that companies run on the basis of climate are in disfavor.
The radical left is losing power. Even AOC got booed recently at a town hall. And as Biden’s hard-eyed radical base of support falters, he really has no other power source to fall back on.
By mid-summer, the Democratic race for president may look entirely different.
