What the Democrats' open convention means for energy

The government shouldn’t dictate our energy future. The American people should.

With the Democratic Party thrown into chaos at the announcement of President Joe Biden’s sudden withdrawal from his re-election campaign, the media is abuzz about who will take Biden’s place in the first open convention since the 1960s. 

Kamala Harris reportedly has enough delegates to clinch the nomination, but as we’ve seen these past few weeks, the tides can change quickly — and in some sense, it doesn’t really matter who the convention picks. Any Democratic nominee would continue the policy path that has wrecked the American economy and dismantled our energy independence.

Why does energy matter when everyone is talking about inflation, the border, and conflicts around the world? Because everything we do depends on access to affordable, reliable energy — which means our next president’s energy policy will shape America’s future and the world’s future. The Democrats’ vision for expensive, scarce, and government-controlled energy dependent on the whims of the weather, about as reliable as Obamacare is affordable, would spell disaster for our nation.

And they know their policies won’t work. Just weeks after publicly praising the infamous Green New Deal — which has been revived through the deceptively named Inflation Reduction Act —  Biden admitted banning fossil fuels was “not possible” and declined to ban fracking despite pressure from environmentalist activists. “I would transition from the oil industry,” Biden proclaimed at the debate, only to admit moments later, “We’re not getting rid of fossil fuels.” The left’s anti-energy agenda offers promises they simply can’t keep.

It’s hard to argue with President Trump’s record of transforming America into the world’s dominant energy producer — not to mention a world leader in clean air. Under the Trump administration, the United States became a net energy exporter for the first time, giving our nation more national security, a leg up in global trade negotiations, and a stronger economy. It provided Americans more good-paying jobs making as much as double the private-sector average — something sorely needed in today’s economy. And Trump’s policies saved the average American household $2,500 a year on energy alone.

The left needs to admit its dream of going 100% renewable is a pipe dream. Despite decades of multibillion-dollar subsidies, wind and solar remain too unreliable to serve as anything other than a supplementary power source. “Wind and solar promoters need to start admitting that they are not capable of providing this type of continuous and on-demand electricity supply on a national scale that modern societies are used to,” said the author of a study on climate change expenditures.

Even if it were feasible, a nationwide transition to all-renewable power would have a laughably minuscule effect on global temperatures, according to UN models, mere fractions of a degree in exchange for trillions of tax dollars, a dismantled economy, and an end to reliable electricity for the masses.

And there’s now some question as to whether wind and solar power live up to their net-zero hype anyway — not only because of the massive amounts of fossil fuels required to manufacture, ship, and maintain their components, but also because of carbon dioxide wind and solar farms generate by warming the soil beneath them. Additional research also suggests that the earth’s current pattern of warming is perfectly normal and that manmade emissions are not significant enough to cause meaningful global temperature change.

If climate change is really the problem Joe Biden and his supporters seek to solve, they should back nuclear power, the most energy-dense and lowest-emitting fuel available, or President Trump’s One Trillion Trees initiative, which would have eliminated two-thirds of manmade carbon dioxide emissions. More importantly, they should be celebrating America’s unprecedented progress in clean air and water, with harmful air pollution down 78% in the last 50 years.

But the climate plans promulgated by leading Democrats aren’t about the environment. They’re about controlling the American people’s choices.

Instead of a futile and exorbitantly expensive fight against our constantly changing climate, our tax dollars should be spent responsibly on the real problems affecting American families here and now, like economic recovery, disaster preparedness, and public safety.

Ultimately, the government shouldn’t dictate our energy future. The American people should.