I keep reading claims that Biden is blocking energy development in the United States. For example, this is from the Wall Street Journal, via Judith Curry's blog:
“Europe offers another reminder to the U.S. that blocking fossil-fuel development here won’t keep carbon “in the ground.” It merely hands a strategic weapon to dictators that they will turn around and use against us.”
In fact, oil, gas and coal production are all up since Biden took office in January 2021:
Source: https://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/
And this is from today's Morning Energy report (a daily email) from Politico:
The Biden administration has approved oil and gas permits on federal land at a faster clip than former President Donald Trump's final year, the U.S. still exports more crude oil and petroleum products than it imports and Keystone XL never started while much of the oil it would have transported got to market through rail and other means. Plus, the U.S. has never been closed off from oil imports, even bringing in 7.9 million barrels per day in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic when demand cratered.
Some people are eager to use the Ukraine crisis to blame Biden for everything, and to take advantage of it to further fossil fuel use even in light of the climate crisis (which Curry denies).
If you attack fossil fuel at the supply side, you make fossil fuel producers in other regions rich. If you attack it at the demand side with a revenue neutral carbon tax, you hit fossil fuel producers everywhere, and the "dirtiest" oil becomes too expensive to extract.
ReplyDeleteCurry may be wrong in saying that Biden has reduced production, but she's right to say that he shouldn't.
Is he doing anything on climate though? His infrastructure plan was going to invest in clean energy. That failed. Does he have a backup plan?
What Judith doesn't mention, is that by continuing to rely on fossil fuels we are propping up the Putin regime.
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