Kneecapping the Oil Industry Won’t Help the Economy or the Environment
District of Columbia | May 11, 2021
On Earth Day this year, President Joe Biden unilaterally committed the United States to a 50 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2030. Biden’s Intelligence Director, Avril Haines, declared climate change as the center of American foreign policy for the decade to come. Even Treasury secretary Janet Yellen, a fine economist but hardly a climate expert, dutifully called climate change an “existential threat.”
Their hearts might be in the right place, but America also needs level heads. While committing to sacrificing our energy supremacy — achieved thanks to America’s shale revolution — the Biden administration appears willing to overlook energy production in countries such as China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia, which boast nearly one-third of the world’s population. It is a giant leap of faith to assume that these countries will follow our lead in cutting off their cheapest sources of energy. Even most of the European countries that signed the Paris Climate Agreement didn’t come anywhere close to meeting their commitments five years after signing that treaty. Meanwhile, the U.S. has been one of the global leaders in reductions in air-pollution levels, even as Donald Trump pulled us out of unenforceable treaties that put America’s economic interests last…
(Excerpts from the National Review)