We’ll readily admit it: Donald Trump has broken us, and it’s just one more reason we hate him. We should be outraged by his constant lies and hypocrisy, and on one level we are, because Jesus Christ on a Honda Motocompacto electric scooter, how did this constantly lying asshole remake so much of American politics and media in his image?
This week, Trump pal Steve Bannon gave away the game on another lie that’s been central to Trump’s campaign. In a New York Times story (gift link), Bannon cheerfully acknowledged that under Joe Biden, the USA has been producing more oil and fossil gas than it ever has — a fact that a Trump-allied ratfucking operation has been pushing to potential Democratic voters to urge them to vote for Jill Stein, in hopes that some young lefty voters will abandon Biden. Bannon explained the ratfuck:
No Republican knows that oil production under Biden is higher than ever. But Jill Stein’s people do. … Stein is furious about the oil drilling. The college kids are furious about it. The more exposure these [third-party candidates] get, the better it is for us.
Bannon’s probably right about Republicans not knowing that energy production is setting records under the Biden administration, especially since it’s been an article of faith for Republicans since the Obama years that Democrats hate oil and gas and want everyone to live in caves. But as many observers, including MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, have pointed out — repeatedly — it’s one of the biggest “hidden” stories of Biden’s presidency.
It’s also a a bit politically dicey for Biden, as Hayes also notes. “From a climate perspective, not great; which, true, but crucially, also renewable power is booming,” for which the credit rightly goes to Biden and the Inflation Reduction Act’s $370 billion investment in clean energy.
I want the world to decarbonize as rapidly as possible, so no, not entirely thrilled by all the oil and gas production, which has more to do with US energy companies having a very hungry export market than with any Biden (or Trump) policies anyway. But to actually decarbonize, you also need political leadership that’s committed to doing so, and that’s coming from only one party. From a realpolitik perspective, booming US oil production helps keep gas prices down, making it more likely Biden will be reelected, and that may be the most important thing there is for getting the US off the fossil fuel teat by midcentury. (And then once we all have public transit, e-bikes, and electric nerd cars, gas prices will never be a political issue again.)
Of course, as Greg Sargent points out over at New Republic, Bannon’s willingness to tell the truth about oil production under Biden, in hopes of sending young climate voters off to vote for third-party candidates, doesn’t simply leave out the larger reality that Trump would be a disaster for the climate again. It also
entirely undermines one of Trump’s biggest lies: the claim that Biden’s effort to transition the United States to a decarbonized economy has destroyed the nation’s “energy independence,” leaving us weak and hollow to our very core.
It’s just not so, and the Trump team knows it, and Trump voters are largely immune to the facts anyway. Oil simply can’t be flourishing under Biden, because he’s a Democrat. Hence Trump’s weird insistence that he will solve all America’s problems, including illegal immigration, with the promise to “drill, drill, drill.” Which is bullshit, since we’re already drilling, drilling, drilling.
The far more pernicious side effect of that lie, however, is that it also insulates MAGA America from embracing or even acknowledging the very real economic benefits Biden’s climate policies are bringing to the country, as Sargent outlines:
Biden’s green policies are facilitating billions of dollars in investments in rebuilding the industrial base via green energy manufacturing, which is creating a whole lot of advanced manufacturing jobs for people without college degrees—exactly the targets of Trump’s demagoguery. Those policies are driving a manufacturing boom, ironically in red-leaning communities.
As Hayes pointed out, that’s all happening even as the US is producing record amounts of oil and gas — and in fact, the rapid increase in clean energy and related technology is what’s finally going to make it feasible to say goodbye to fossil fuels. That’s also the basic approach being pursued by China, which has deployed far more renewable energy than the rest of the world combined (yay!), even as it’s still also building coal plants (oh no!) to cover current energy needs. Renewables, especially solar, produce such inexpensive power that they’ll drive coal out of business, even in China — the sooner the better.
Princeton University energy boffin Jesse Jenkins, one of my favorite clean energy nerds, pointed out to Sargent that all that increased production has made the US a “net exporter of all fossil fuels. So we’ve achieved that long-sought goal of physical energy security.” What’s more, an increasing percentage of that energy is coming from renewables, whose market share will keep expanding because they keep beating fossil fuels on price.
That price advantage for renewables means that if Trump returns to office, he can certainly use the levers of power to prop up fossil fuels, as he tried and failed to do with coal; there’s some small comfort in knowing that the economics favor renewables in the long term, but the additional damage to the climate would be disastrous. Plus, there’s that whole threat-to-democracy thing that could mean the US isn’t able to return to sane climate policy for decades. How about we stick with Biden? He’s actually committed to cutting greenhouse emissions — as with his recent pause on permits for new liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminals, an action that will significantly offset emissions from the current boom in oil production. And that’s the big picture we climate nerds have to keep our eyes on.
“What’s important to note is that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are falling,” Jenkins says. That both this and robust oil production and exports are occurring simultaneously, he notes, would probably be viewed positively by moderate voters, including in Appalachia and the industrial Midwest.
Whether that messaging get through the toxic chemical fog of MAGA energy lies is another matter, but a second Biden term would certainly do a lot to make clear that clean energy is an economic winner, even (especially) in red states. That’s part of the reason the IRA’s energy investments are being rolled out all over the country. It’s like the thing where major defense contracts have subcontractors in as many congressional districts as possible. When lots of jobs in your district are part of the clean energy economy, particularly where coal and oil are declining, there’s a powerful incentive to continue those green policies.
[New Republic / NYT (gift link) / NYT (gift link)]