Understanding Biden Administration Energy Policy

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Politicians have long been known for having a loose relationship with the truth. Generally, that takes the form of exaggeration or hyperbole. But the latest craze among Democrats is just making flatly contradictory statements.

In this category, it’s hard to top the performance of Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman on Saturday night, when he uttered this immortal quote:

I run on Roe v Wade. I celebrate the demise of Roe v. Wade. That's the choice that we have between us, in front of us.”

Video at the link if you don’t believe it. Clearly, Fetterman is not all there mentally.

But how different is that, really, from Joe Biden on energy policy? The main difference that I can find is that there does not appear to be an example where Biden has so clearly contradicted himself in consecutive sentences uttered to the same audience on the same night. But his various statements on energy policy are at least as contradictory as Fetterman’s on abortion. Consider a few from Category A and Category B.

Category A.

  • Biden at a February 2020 rally: “We are going to get rid of fossil fuels. . . . That’s okay. These guys are okay. They want to do the same thing I want to do. They want to phase out fossil fuels, and we’re going to phase out fossil fuels.”

  • Biden at a March 15, 2020 CNN debate with Bernie Sanders: "No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period. [It] ends.”

  • Biden Executive Order, January 27, 2021: “The United States and the world face a profound climate crisis. We have a narrow moment to pursue action at home and abroad in order to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of that crisis and to seize the opportunity that tackling climate change presents.”

  • White House press release, April 22, 2021: “Today, President Biden will announce a new target for the United States to achieve a 50-52 percent reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution in 2030. . . . On Day One, President Biden fulfilled his promise to rejoin the Paris Agreement and set a course for the United States to tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad, reaching net zero emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050. As part of re-entering the Paris Agreement, he also launched a whole-of-government process, organized through his National Climate Task Force, to establish this new 2030 emissions target.”

  • List of section headings from Report at RealClearEnergy by Joseph Toomey dated September 2022, listing major Biden Administration energy initiatives: “Canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline; Halting Lease Sales in Alaska’s ANWR; Placing a Moratorium on Drilling on Federal Lands; Rejoining the Paris Climate Accord; Proposing Energy-Inhibiting Budgets; Canceling Oil and Gas Drilling Leases; Initiating Punitive Government Investigations; Restricting Permian Basin Drilling Using Ozone Rules; Imposing Stricter Methane Emissions Rules.”

Category B.

  • Biden remarks at White House, October 19, 2022: “[W]e need to responsibly increase American oil production without delaying or deferring our transition to clean energy. [Ed - very Fettermanesque there] Let me — let’s debunk some myths here. My administration has not stopped or slowed U.S. oil production; quite the opposite.

  • Biden remarks in upstate New York, October 27, 2022: “Today . . . we’re in a much better place [than when I took office]. . . . [G]as prices are declining. We’re down $1.25 since the peak this summer, and they’ve been falling for the last three weeks at well — as well. That’s adding up to real savings for families. Today, the most common price of gas in America is $3.39 — down from over $5 when I took office.”

CNN, of all places, called out that last line in a big fact check of recent Biden whoppers (of which there are many):

Biden’s claim that the most common gas price when he took office was more than $5 is not even close to accurate. The most common price for a gallon of regular gas on the day he was inaugurated, January 20, 2021, was $2.39, according to data provided to CNN by Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. In other words, Biden made it sound like gas prices had fallen significantly during his presidency when they had actually increased significantly.

So is Biden Administration policy to suppress fossil fuels — and thereby inherently cause their prices to increase — or is it to lower prices? I would only point out that the big suite of suppression initiatives listed under Category A all continue today, even as Biden on the campaign trail suddenly does a 180 and says he is encouraging an increase in oil production. The pipeline blockages, the resistance to drilling on federal lands and offshore, the new methane and ozone rules, the net zero targets — all of those continue as if the policy of fossil fuel suppression is fully in force. Same for new and burdensome initiatives from the SEC and Federal Reserve to hinder financing for fossil fuel development. None of the Executive Orders on fossil fuel suppression have been rescinded.

Thousands of bureaucrats working throughout the government remain fully committed to the goal of eliminating fossil fuels, even though there is no demonstrated workable replacement other than nuclear, which the bureaucrats equally oppose. And those bureaucrats will remain there and implementing their goal by force until Biden is voted out and a massive broom comes through to sweep them away.

UPDATE, November 7: Apparently, even as I was writing this post yesterday, Biden was speaking at a Kathy Hochul campaign event in Yonkers. Forbes has the report, under the headline “Biden Promises ‘No More Drilling’ Just Days After Demanding More Drilling”:

Stumping for embattled New York Gov. Kathy Hochul at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers Sunday, the President responded to a shouted question from an audience member about his longstanding promises to shut down fracking and new drilling on federal lands and waters by saying “no more drilling...there is no more drilling...I haven’t formed any new drilling.” When the questioner persisted by pointing out there has been new drilling in federal lands and waters in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico during his presidency, Biden said, “That was before I was president. We’re trying to work on that to get that done.”

It all makes perfect sense if you just assume that Biden is prepared to say whatever he thinks the current audience wants to hear, no matter how contradictory to his previous statements and how factually inaccurate, with complete confidence that the mainstream media will cover for him.