National Review Online
Monday, January 06, 2025
As we commented previously, the effort of advisers to disguise
President Biden’s declining mental health throughout his time in office, along
with the media’s complicity, has been a historic scandal. While it is tempting
to view the scandal as something in the rearview mirror now that Donald Trump
is about to assume office, the reality is that for the next several weeks,
Biden still retains all the powers of the presidency. And while the public
still cannot be sure that he is competent to make his own decisions, he keeps taking
irresponsible actions that please progressive activists.
Just before Christmas, Biden egregiously commuted the
sentences of 37 out of 40 death row inmates, dismissing years of careful work
by prosecutors, judges, and juries. Yet in a PR move, he arbitrarily decided to
keep the sentences of the three killers who committed the most high-profile
crimes.
Now, Bloomberg reports that in an effort to cement his legacy with climate
change zealots, Biden “is preparing to issue a decree permanently banning new
offshore oil and gas development in some US coastal waters, locking in
difficult-to-revoke protections during his final weeks in the White House.” The
order, which according to the report is expected any day, would bar the sale of
drilling rights in large portions of the outer continental shelf.
While Trump would no doubt attempt to reverse the
decision, Biden officials are heartened by a ruling during the first Trump
administration, when a federal court blocked efforts to undo Obama-era
environmental regulations.
During the 2024 campaign, under fire for prior statements
calling for a ban on fracking and offshore drilling, Vice President Kamala
Harris sought to portray the administration as champions of domestic oil
production, arguing in her debate with Trump that she and Biden were
responsible for “the largest increase in domestic oil production in history
because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot over-rely on foreign
oil.″
That talking point was deceptive. While the Biden
administration issued more drilling permits than Trump did, the new permits
were issued on land that had been leased out during the Trump administration,
while Biden stalled the issuance of new leases.
The move to preemptively bar drilling in an additional
area of U.S. coastal waters would be reckless. While we have no objections to
the market extracting more energy from renewables without government assistance,
the reality is that right now, despite decades of friendly regulations and tens of
billions of dollars in subsidies, renewable energy accounts for only 9
percent of U.S. energy consumption. In contrast, petroleum (38 percent) and
natural gas (36 percent) combine for roughly three-quarters.
While a carbon-free future may be a progressive fantasy,
as long as society is still heavily reliant on fossil fuels, the focus of any
American president should be to ensure as much domestic production as possible.
That Biden is seeking to undermine the nation’s energy
independence with a last-minute executive action is bad enough. That we don’t
even know whether Biden himself made the decision in good health, or whether
it’s being done in his name by a group of left-wing activists in the
administration, makes it even worse.
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