Democrat Socialists Rejecting Biden’s Move to Middle (Green Party bump?)

“By refusing to embrace a fracking ban, Biden is following the well-trodden liberal path of rhetorically acknowledging the threat posed by climate change, while rejecting the measures necessary to actually deal with it. If he really believes, as per the language on his own official website, that “climate change is the greatest threat facing our country and our world” he and other liberal politicians should start behaving like that threat is real.” [- Luke Savage (below)]

“Joe Biden Is Wrong. Believing in Science Means Banning Fracking” by Luke Savage is a rare rebuke against the pro-fracking stance of Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden for private lands. Climate alarmist Andrew Dessler gave Biden a pass (maybe there is not a climate emergency after all!), as has far Left climate group 350.org by endorsing the candidate who switched positions on one of their signature issues.

And most recently in his presidential debate, Biden smacked the Green New Deal (“No, I don’t support the Green New Deal,” he stated). Does he or doesn’t he … that is the question.

Savage pulls few punches in his takedown:

Joe Biden wants to have it both ways, issuing bold rhetoric about the climate emergency while refusing to adopt a policy agenda to match. But taking the science of climate change seriously means banning practices like fracking — something Biden has so far refused to do.

The problem is one that applies to virtually all political rhetoric: merely acknowledging the reality of climate change means very little unless the sentiment is paired with commensurate action.

And, of course, Savage rests his case on the ongoing California wildfires and the active 2020 hurricane season–tipping points of climate alarm that have nothing to do with an election and TDS, right?

Last week, as wildfires burned throughout the west coast, liberal politicians like Gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi went rhetorically all in on the idea of imminent climate emergency — the former having approved some forty-eight new fracking permits since April, and the latter famously dismissing the Green New Deal. It’s all well and good to call climate change “the existential threat of our time” (as Pelosi once did) but actualizing that belief requires a lot more than the perfunctory nod to science so regularly offered by liberal politicians.

The same can be said about the Democratic presidential nominee who, like Pelosi, has boldly come out in favor of “science” on numerous occasions. During a recent CNN town hall, Biden made clear he doesn’t support a ban on fracking — the practice of injecting chemicals into the ground at high pressure to extract natural gas:

“Fracking has to continue because we need a transition…. We’re going to get to net-zero emissions by 2050, and we’ll get to net-zero power emissions by 2035. But there’s no rationale to eliminate, right now, fracking.”

Fracking is not just another issue–it is job #1 of the climate crusade to keep fossil fuels in the ground despite consumer demand and the best technology to liberate resources. Savage continues:

The United States is now one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel exporters, and a massive increase in fracking — which, it turns out, may be an even worse contributor to climate change than previously thought — is a major reason. This means, as several prominent environmental leaders told Jacobin last year, that banning the practice is absolutely essential to any serious green agenda.

As Mitch Jones of Food & Water Watch put it: “Having a fracking ban as a component of your climate plan is a litmus test for how seriously you’re taking the problem of climate change.” Without that, he added, “you have no way to seriously reduce greenhouse gas emissions that we have at the rate we need to do it.”

By refusing to embrace a fracking ban, Biden is following the well-trodden liberal path of rhetorically acknowledging the threat posed by climate change, while rejecting the measures necessary to actually deal with it. If he really believes, as per the language on his own official website, that “climate change is the greatest threat facing our country and our world” he and other liberal politicians should start behaving like that threat is real.

Final Comment

Biden’s naked run toward the political center on the future of fossil fuels brings to mind Presidential candidate Al Gore’s rejection of higher gasoline taxes in 2000–and demotion of the climate issue also. It is as if he had not written and said all those things in Earth in the Balance.

It also reminds of Barack Obama’s Trumpian “oil moment” in 2012 where gasoline prices were high and the public aroused. Opinion polls speak loudly when motor fuel prices–the best known price in the country–are abnormally high.

But don’t be fooled! Biden does want to ban fracking on public lands (New Mexico, are you listening?), and what begins there could easily be extended to private lands.

But for the keep-it-in-the-ground Left, Biden’s wishy washy positioning on fossil fuels portends trouble with the Bernie/Warren faction of the Democrat Party, and could spell opportunity for the Green Party, whose platform will be the subject of the next two posts at MasterResource.