At CPAC 2021, in his first speech since leaving office, President Donald J. Trump warned that America is heading from energy dominance to energy dependence under the new administration.
Sadly, President Joe Biden’s initial flurry of environmental actions, particularly shuttering the nearly-complete Keystone XL pipeline by executive order, is a net loss for the American public.
Emblematic of Democratic hypocrisy, the Biden administration’s anti-energy directives result in higher energy prices and lower American productivity. But the greatest indictment on these 'America Last' energy policies is their empowerment of dictators overseas at the cost of our own citizens.
The Biden regime’s protocol will have no substantial effect on reducing the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. China will remain the greatest environmental perpetrator globally, and our government will do nothing to hold Beijing to account.
Instead, the proposed policies will decimate the American energy industry and ensure that much more of the world’s energy needs will be met by foreign adversaries.
During his historic first term in office, President Trump recognized that a reduction in fuel prices would create tremendous economic value for American households.
After nearly six decades of energy dependence, the U.S. at last achieved energy independence under the Trump administration. We were not beholden to friends or adversaries for our energy supply. Americans enjoyed low fuel prices for the full duration of his term.
The President’s vision behind the Keystone XL pipeline was to provide a lower-cost path to transport oil already flowing from our Canadian neighbors to refineries in the Midwest.
Without the pipeline, oil still flows south, but on a more circuitous path across older pipelines, trucks, and rail cars. This inevitably raises the price that Americans struggling through a pandemic have to pay at the pump.
But now, Joe Biden’s leftist cabal will ensure that U.S. energy suppliers are stifled at every corner, increasing the world’s dependence on our not-so-neighborly trading partners in the MidEast and Russia.
The irony is that self-proclaimed human-rights activists cheer as Biden diverts money from hard-working American energy workers into the coffers of absolute monarchies and sham republics where women are third-class citizens; where migrant workers from Asia and Africa are treated like slaves.
When I worked in President Trump’s State Department, we considered it our patriotic duty to promote American values like free speech, religious liberty, and the protection of life around the world. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which loath these American values, earn trillions of dollars selling oil and gas.
The political establishment in Washington claims that a secure commitment to human rights around the world, but consistently ignores the well-documented human rights violations committed regularly by the nations that have—and will soon again—supply our oil and gas.
In fact, with the U.S, out of the way, Qatar is clamoring to be the global leader in liquefied natural gas exports for the next 20 years. One month of Biden’s pandering to certain billionaires may have not only reversed the tremendous gains made under President Trump, but also cost the U.S. decades of energy leadership and market share to come.
Oil wells and pipelines that don’t make it into the ground in America will be drilled in other countries where environmental protection and human rights aren’t even an afterthought.
Think of the message that sends to our great American entrepreneurs: Our federal government is willing to swoop in and shut down a project with millions invested for phony political optics, 42,000 jobs evaporate overnight, and the productive investment that should be in the U.S. will instead feed oil oligarchs around the globe—oligarchs who wish death to America as we know it.
In declaring war on our own energy providers, the Biden administration will drive down productive American investments, push out American jobs, and increase the price of oil.
The only winners of these destructive anti-energy policies are distant foreign governments, the zealots of the Green Left, the multimillion-dollar environmental lobbyists, and the renewable energy special interest groups in Washington.
Say goodbye to America First; Biden has bought America a one-way ticket to last place on his diurnal solar-powered train.
Catharine O'Neill served at the Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development from the first day to the last day of President Donald J. Trump's administration. The issues that she focused on included religious freedom, immigration, UN reform, and protecting life. Read Catharine O'Neill's Reports - More Here.