Trump's right on climate 'reality,' Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez reaching with 'emergency'
This week President Trump was out touting his environmental record in a world that thinks unless you adopt a radical approach to totally get off of fossil fuels, then thereby you are a planet destroyer. And when the president speaks or tweets, the oil markets listen. Frankly, the oil trade should have been relieved when he pointed out the obvious flaw in the Green New Deal: reality.
“We have only one America. We have only one planet, but while we're focused on practical solutions, more than 100 Democrats in Congress now support the so-called Green New Deal. Their plan is estimated to cost our economy nearly $100 trillion -- a number unthinkable, a number not affordable even in the best of times," Trump said in a speech on Monday.
“For years,” he said, “Americans were told that a strong energy sector is incompatible with a healthy environment. In other words, one thing does not go with the other and that is wrong because we are proving the exact opposite.” And we are.
“Since 2000, our nation's energy-related carbon emissions have declined more than any other country on earth -- think of that. Emissions are projected to drop in 2019 and 2020," he said. This was only possible by shale natural gas. The U.S. energy industry’s record-level natural gas production allowed us to replace dirtier coal in power generation, making carbon emissions from the U.S. as low as they were back in the 1990s.
The president made some great points in the speech that his critics will try to dismiss, even though they are factually correct. Like the fact that the U.S. is ranked No. 1 in the world in "access to clean drinking water."
The bottom line is the growth in U.S. energy has not only been economically sound policy, but it also has served the environment well. Yet it won’t be enough for some Democrats who want to declare a “climate emergency.”
Yes, according to reports, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., are floating a nonbinding resolution to declare a "climate emergency" that demands a sweeping mobilization in response. Of course, if it is a real emergency why would you go for a nonbinding resolution? If my house were burning down, heck, I would want the fire department to declare a real emergency, not a nonbinding one.
They once again want to repeat the job-killing anti-energy policies of the last administration -- but this would take it to a whole new level. What the level is, is not exactly clear because like the Green New Deal it lacks specifics and talks in wide-sweeping generalities.
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The most binding case they make in this nonbinding resolution is the fact that ‘”2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 were the four hottest years on record and the 20 warmest years on record have occurred within the past 22 years,” yet they don’t explain if that includes 100 years, 200 hundred years or millions of years. Yet who needs specifics when a climate emergency is a nonbinding emergency.
Phil Flynn is senior energy analyst at The PRICE Futures Group and a Fox Business Network contributor. He is one of the world's leading market analysts, providing individual investors, professional traders, and institutions with up-to-the-minute investment and risk management insight into global petroleum, gasoline, and energy markets. His precise and timely forecasts have come to be in great demand by industry and media worldwide and his impressive career goes back almost three decades, gaining attention with his market calls and energetic personality as writer of The Energy Report. You can contact Phil by phone at (888) 264-5665 or by email at pflynn@pricegroup.com.