Biden Spokesman: Ignore Joe on Fracking

Tom Finnerty17 Mar, 2020 3 Min Read
I did what?

Joe Biden's campaign team are furious about the outrageous distortions coming from Republicans about his position on fracking. And how could they not be, when prominent Republicans such as RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel are out there tweeting outrageous falsehoods like: "There are 7.3M Americans whose jobs depend on fracking. Biden and Bernie would eliminate them."

Unbelievable! I mean, when Bernie Sanders said he wanted to stop “fracking as soon as we possibly can,” and that he was “talking about telling the fossil fuel industry that they are going to stop destroying this planet—no ifs, buts and maybes about it” in the debate the other night, Biden replied "So am I!" His position is as clear as the noonday sun! Oh, or, er, maybe not so much...

A quick look at Biden's website's climate section isn't much of a help either -- lots of stuff about how "the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face" and how Uncle Joe will ensure that "the U.S. achieves a 100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions no later than 2050" -- when the 77-year-old Biden will be long dead. Nothing, however, about fracking. Luckily his trusty spokesmen were available to clear things up:

A spokesman for Mr. Biden’s campaign clarified that the former vice president wouldn’t ban fracking, which is now commonly used to produce natural gas and oil in key states with blue-collar voters like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Colorado. He was referring only to his stated policy to ban new permits for oil and gas drilling on federal land and offshore, the spokesman added.

Thanks! Maybe that guy should be running for president...

Which isn't to say it is a policy that makes any sense. In fact, it sounds like a policy cooked up entirely by campaign spokesmen, who are terrified of the environmentalist death cult that wields so much power in the media and in the Democratic Party (but I repeat myself), yet also knows that hydraulic fracturing employs lots of working-class men and women in the Rust Belt who are ready and willing to vote against candidates of either party who don't have their economic and social interests at heart.

Those are the voters who got Trump over the finish line in 2016 in several important states, and who Team Biden is hoping will give him a good long look as long as he doesn't say anything too stupid, like that he's planning to wipe out their jobs in the first year of his presidency. Which doesn't mean he wouldn't -- once he's in, he can relax and let his aides govern the country however his handlers see fit. Or, if he lives that long, his potential vice president.

It's also idiotic because aside from employing a great many people in states that need the jobs, fracking has also done exactly what lefties are always promising us that wind and solar power will do. From a recent report from the International Energy Agency entitled Global CO2 emissions in 2019:

The United States saw the largest decline in energy-related CO2 emissions in 2019 on a country basis – a fall of 140 Mt, or 2.9%, to 4.8 Gt. US emissions are now down almost 1 Gt from their peak in the year 2000, the largest absolute decline by any country over that period. A 15% reduction in the use of coal for power generation underpinned the decline in overall US emissions in 2019. Coal-fired power plants faced even stronger competition from natural gas-fired generation, with benchmark gas prices an average of 45% lower than 2018 levels. As a result, gas increased its share in electricity generation to a record high of 37%.

Which is to say that banning fracking would be bad for the environment, because it would mean burning more coal. And banning the expansion of fracking would be relatively bad for the environment because it would prevent clean natural gas from replacing coal as a reliable and low-carbon energy source.

So maybe Joe's campaign team should think a little harder on this topic. And then maybe they can tattoo the results on the palm of their candidate's hand so he can refer to them whenever the topic comes up.

Tom Finnerty writes from New England and Ontario.

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