by Steve Milloy, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow and Junkscience.com Founder
As appearing in The Washington Examiner
“I guarantee you — I guarantee you — we are going to end fossil fuel.”
So said then-candidate Joe Biden to environmental activists at a campaign rally in 2019. The president has yet to deliver on his promise to turn the entire U.S. energy system on its head, but given the record high gas prices at the fuel pump, he’s certainly made driving and powering homes punitively unavailable to low-income households.
The administration is keen on blaming the war in Ukraine for the hardships people are facing. This attempt is window dressing at best and blatant misinformation at worst. While European nations are heavily reliant on Russian gas in particular, the United States only used to get about 8% of its supplies from Russia. Most crude oil is imported here from Canada. Indeed, even Mexico is more important for America’s oil trade than President Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Another striking difference with most European nations is the fact that the U.S. has its own oil reserves. In theory, this would mean more energy independence. However, oil drilling permits have been cut by more than half since Biden came to office. Biden says oil companies should feel encouraged to increase capacity. But the industry has hit back by revealing how the Biden administration delays its activities through actions such as initially banning and then slow-walking lease sales on federal land or making drilling permits more difficult to obtain.
