It is the nature of the beast for political candidates to make campaign promises that they cannot possibly keep. In 2016 Donald Trump predicted he could grow the U.S. economy by 6% a year, and said he would get Mexico to pay for building a wall on the southern border.
Neither pledge came close to happening. But Joe Biden in 2020 made a promise that was even more farfetched than Trump’s. In his quest to lessen the impact of global warming, he said there would be no more drilling for oil and gas on federal lands.
There were two problems with this audacious statement.
First, as lawyers advised Biden after he became president, the law states that the Department of the Interior must hold lease sales on public lands every three months. Biden issued an executive order anyway to suspend the lease program, but a court promptly blocked him.
Second, federal lands may be under the control of the government, but private property is not. Even so, The Washington Post reports that the Biden administration has issued more drilling permits than Trump’s administration, though for far fewer acres.
The result is that during Biden’s presidency, American oil and gas production keeps setting record highs, thanks in part to the removal of Russian oil from the world market since its invasion of Ukraine. That “no more federal drilling” promise completely missed the mark.
“The unplanned fossil fuel boom reflects an uncomfortable truth for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris: It is difficult for any president to stop the spigot of U.S. oil production, a leading driver of both the economy and climate change,” the Post reported.
Interestingly, American crude oil output has been rising steadily since 2011, even though that’s right about when the first electric vehicles hit the market. The government has set lower vehicle emission standards in an effort to get automakers to produce more EVs —which they are doing — but demand for energy from the ground continues to grow.
This is sending an unmistakable signal that Harris should acknowledge when she accepts the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday night. She should say something along the lines of, “America and the world needs to move away from fossil fuels — but too many of us are not convinced of this. My job will be to close the sale, and keep the country moving in the direction of clean energy.”
She and her advisers reportedly understand the mistake Biden made with his no-federal-drilling promise, and intend to avoid a similar pledge that would be impossible to meet.
Oil and gas production may keep rising. We can’t just shut down the whole industry. But more clean energy is coming, too. The best path is to let the market decide how rapidly or slowly the country will move in that new direction.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
