The United States is the world's largest producer of both oil and natural gas, making the U.S. an energy superpower despite the policies, pleadings and regulatory machinations of the Biden administration.
But such energy leadership doesn't sit well with the green crowd Mr. Biden needs on his side in the November election. These assorted groups and individuals believe fossil fuels are among capitalism's many great sins, and that any and every effort must be made/imposed/demanded to shut the pipelines and drilling rigs down.
Including those that, if allowed, would only strengthen the hand of murderous dictators like Russian's Vladimir Putin. As Politico reports, the Biden administration is looking at new environmental rules “that could tap the brakes on the booming U.S. natural gas export industry – a move that threatens to pit the president's climate ambitions against his foreign policy agenda.”
Oh, do tell:
The review being led by the Department of Energy will examine whether regulators should take climate change into account when deciding whether a proposed gas export project meets the national interest…
Which would put methane emissions in the national security driver's seat. How's that going over?
…national security experts were quick to point out that without gas exports the White House may have not been able to keep European nations united in support of Ukraine after deliveries of Russian gas to the region shriveled in 2022.
“It is now pretty much conventional wisdom that the U.S. LNG industry played a big role helping Europe shift away from Russian gas after the invasion of Ukraine and that helped maintain European solidarity, and in Northeast Asia it's a big part of energy security planning,” said Joseph Majkut, director of the energy security and climate change program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
Security planning? That's got nothing on beating Big Oil and Bigger Gas.
One could dismiss such regulatory reviews as election year window dressing – and effort to appease a noisy constituency rather than a determined policy rethink. And that might be the right view, too.
But even if that's true and Biden himself has no intention of stopping the gas from flowing to placate the greens, the episode is still instructive.
It reminds us of how often – and still – environmentalists have played the role of useful idiots to whichever thug happens to wield power in the Kremlin.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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