In yet another militantly irrational move, the Biden administration has cancelled one of America’s largest pending oil and gas lease sales. With gas prices setting new all-time highs almost daily, the Biden administration on Thursday abruptly cancelled all plans to lease drilling rights in over a million acres in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, along with a couple of areas in the Gulf of Mexico. The move quickly prompted sharp criticism against an administration that has proven time and time again to be deaf to the enticements of reason.
Or is Biden’s dogged determination to shut down domestic energy production, no matter how much damage is inflicted, just a byproduct of reflexive leftist hatred of the energy industry? Given the consistency of Biden’s indifference to the growing energy crisis, we wonder whether, after all, Biden’s actions represent a deliberate agenda. Lest we forget, one of President Biden’s first acts, on his very first day as president, was to sign a letter of intent to rejoin the Paris climate agreement, which had been repudiated by President Trump. After a 30-day waiting period, the United States was officially back within the framework of an international agreement whose goal is to completely eliminate carbon emissions (and, hence, the use of oil and gas) by mid-century. At the time, the likes of BBC exulted, “coming back to Paris means it is no longer ‘America First.’ It signals that the spirit of that awkward word, ‘multilateralism,’ is alive and well and living once again in the White House.”
Indeed. And that means that, where the energy industry is concerned, the interests of ordinary Americans matter not a whit. The Biden administration’s perspective on oil and gas is indistinguishable from that of Greenpeace International executive director Jennifer Morgan, who opined that “fossil fuels are like weapons of mass destruction – they need to be kept in the ground.” From such an extreme perspective, sky-high energy prices are a good thing, because they force people to conform to the goals of the climate agenda — i.e., they discourage driving, flying, burning heating oil, etc. — and with these things, drive down levels of those hated carbon emissions.
Perhaps some future president will again withdraw America from the Paris climate accord and the obligations it imposes (obligations ignored by the likes of China and India). Perhaps a future Congress will rein in a rogue president. (Under the U.S. Constitution, the Senate must ratify treaties for them to become effective; yet President Barack Obama committed the United States to the Paris accord via executive fiat, without Senate ratification.) But for now, under a new administration determined to submit America to the dictates of a radical international climate regime, do not expect Biden and his leftist elitist flacks to change course.
