Bringing Back the Stone Age

                      Bringing Back the Stone Age

Clean-burning natural gas has reduced CO2 emissions in the U.S. back to levels experienced in the early 1990s, yielding a 15% reduction in overall U.S. carbon emissions, more than any other country. This with a growing population and an exploding economy. It would be interesting to see how those results compare to the signers of the Paris Accord. Yet almost the entire Democratic field for president wants to dismantle and destroy the industry that has done more for middle-class Americans than any other over the past 10 years. U.S. electricity costs are the envy of the industrialized world. Subsidized energy alternative energy sources are a source of tremendous domestic disruption in France and Germany. Russia has a major disinformation campaign about fracking in Europe to reduce fracking competition for their gas.

Lower energy prices are like a progressive tax cut that helps the poorest households most. But Democrats would reverse all of it. A bill introduced last week by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with help from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) would ban hydraulic fracking nationwide by 2025. That ban would increase CO2 emissions and restore Russia as the world’s top energy superpower. And it would raise baseline budgets across the country.

Incompetence usually trumps malice in government but this kind of thinking is hard to place in a reasonable context. On the other hand, maybe standing in front of a freight train of progress is mainly posturing. And fatal.