David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
I recorded a podcast this week in which the host told me I am an “outlier” for being willing to write the truth about the destructive nature of the Biden administration’s energy policies. It was one of the kindest things anyone has ever said to me, frankly.
So, I guess I will be an outlier again when I write that the idea being considered again by White House officials of having President Biden declare a climate emergency so he can implement a draconian crackdown on the domestic oil and gas industry is frankly crazy. That’s the truth.
Bloomberg reported Thursday that unnamed officials inside the White House said the idea of declaring a climate emergency, first considered in 2021 and again in 2022, is once again under consideration. The only “emergency,” of course, is the president’s flagging approval ratings among impressionable young voters that threaten to derail his re-election chances. Declaring a climate emergency would arm the president with dictatorial powers to hamstring the domestic industry more than his regulators and hundreds of executive orders have already managed to do.
According to Bloomberg’s sources, actions being considered would include suspending offshore drilling, restricting exports of oil and LNG, and “throttling” the industry’s ability to transport its production via pipelines and rail. Given the industry’s crucial nature, it all sounds like a recipe for massive economic disaster.
“The average American is certainly not demanding a climate emergency declaration. It’s the losing team of left-wing Democrat activists and the shrinking base of elites who are,” U.S. Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart told me in an interview. “It’s not about climate, it’s about control: Control over the entire U.S. economy, control of production, manufacturing, distribution, and consumption. If you control energy, you control all these things. Which means you have control of the people.”
Stewart notes that the use of emergency powers in this instance would represent the same playbook used by federal, state, and local governments to restrict citizens’ freedoms and choices during COVID pandemic. But for the president, it would also be a means of shoring up support among the billionaire class that funds both the climate alarmist movement and so many Democrat Party campaigns, including his own campaign for re-election.
That angle was echoed by Tom Pyle, president of the D.C.-based think tank, the Institute for Energy Research. “By now, we have gotten used to incredibly damaging and stupid decisions from the Biden administration, but the idea of declaring a ‘climate emergency’ is in a class by itself,” Pyle told me. “Like the freeze on new LNG permits, the only emergency President Biden is seeking to address with this latest threat is his slippage in the polls among young voters.”
Others with whom I spoke on the matter were skeptical that the White House would really take such an extreme step in the middle of a re-election effort, but that outlook seems naïve, really. After all, who would have predicted last December that the administration would halt all permitting of new LNG export facilities purely for political reasons? Who would have predicted in late 2021 that the president would order the draining of 40% of the nation’s wartime Strategic Petroleum Reserve for no reason other than a pure political calculation designed to try to influence the 2022 midterm election?
Anyone thinking such a move would be made out of a real, good faith effort to somehow impact climate change needs to consider this: Demand for oil and natural gas is a global phenomenon that will not be reduced just because Biden cracks down on the U.S. domestic industry. Such a crackdown would inevitably create the flight of billions of dollars in capital to other parts of the world where environmental regulations are far less stringent than in the United States.
The climate alarmists advocating for this crazy policy action like to ignore the reality that the Earth has only one atmosphere which everyone shares. The U.S. oil and gas industry has dramatically cut emissions of both methane and CO2 even as it has achieved new records in production. No other nation on Earth can make a similar claim.
This is indeed a crazy idea, but it would be a mistake to assume it is not being seriously considered, and for all the wrong reasons.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Well it would be a first for something. Even the IPCC says there is no climate emergency. But Joe “knows things”.
He can speak with the deceased
The sooner the better.
and they vote for him
Correct. Head of the IPCC said not need for alarmisms.
He was contradicted a few weeks later by the UN SecGen who declared (again) code red and followed with precipice.
Biden did not follow the science. He followed the politics.
This is about the 10th story over the last 3 years , all saying Bidens ‘about’ to declare a climate emergency.
“Bloomberg says” ….. they are supposed to be a business news agency , but they write stupid things like this all the time.
Im thinking arch green zealot Bloomberg himself has clicked his fingers and demanded a climate emergency story and make it snappy
Yeah, Joe Bribem is that senile and corrupt.
Giving Brandon emergency powers in not a good idea. He might try to throw his political opponents in jail.
I’m actually kind of surprised that Trump hasn’t fallen out a 7th floor window in a 1 story building yet.
Or worse yet, he might plagiarize another speech.
As an outsider looking at the way the Biden-Obama administration is prepared to recklessly corrupt the US justice system to hamstring their main election opponent I wouldn’t put anything past them.
Yes, the Biden administration is completely corrupt. They will do whatever it takes, legal or illegal, to keep themselves in political power.
What it takes is convincing the electorate that the oldest president ever who has already had two brain surgeries and selected Kamala Harris as a VP should be re-elected to another term.
Meanwhile a health pact Biden signed with 50 countries mentions the word “climate” 28 times.
This article said it involved “…rapid roll-outs of lockdowns and vaccine mandates across multiple sovereign nations simultaneously in the event of a pandemic or “climate change-related emergencies“
In other words they’re twitching for and planning for another societal shock and awe campaign.
https://slaynews.com/news/biden-signs-bill-gates-pact-combat-future-pandemics/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Global-Health-Security-Strategy-2024-1.pdf
Mandates (diktats) can’t even begin to be constitutional without first passing in the Congress. It’s quite obvious the white house is circumventing democratic representative government with it’s “pact”, which does not legally obligate US citizens because it’s obviously unconstitutional. Obama pulled the same trick by signing the Paris Agreement, without Congressional endorsement, but that didn’t stop them from imposing their unattainable and silly emissions reduction programs.
Look for Congress to be pressured to quickly and without public input write a bill authorizing and implementing what is in the pact. If you don’t support this, now is the time to make your voice heard, as it could soon be too late. Expect their activists to hound everyone through the summer.
You left out the percentage of GDP that must be donated and that all related medical equipment and medicines had to be transferred to WHO without any being used domestically so WHO could decide who gets what. Biden signed the agreement in principle, but no treaty has been delivered to Congress, yet.
The there is the treaty proposed by the UN SecGen that allows a committee of national representatives to declare a global emergency. They would stipulate a duration in which the SecGen becomes, essentially, the global dictator. One fun clause is if the SecGen thinks the duration needs an extension he can just implement it without the national reps. The treaty is due out this coming October.
I have always suspected Obama will be installed as SecGen to “finish the job”.
“”The climate alarmists [..] like to ignore the reality that the Earth has only one atmosphere which everyone shares.””
Uh, while that might be true, that is not the problem, but the fact that not the alarmists, but luke warmers are spot on:
Yes, it has been warming and anthropogenic CO2 has a contribution, but there is nothing alarming about it. CO2 is beneficial (it´s production via burning fossil fuel saves many lives and the increased CO2 level greens this planet saving even more lives)
In contrast the alarming models and prognoses are nowhere near reality and should therefore just be ignored for now.
USA does not have trillions of dollar to waste on this and it might make the decision of the voter quite simple.
Darn right . . . the US has trillions of dollars to waste on other things, as exemplified the “Inflation Reduction Act” of 2022 (how’s that working out for you) and the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” of 2009 (the latter of which led directly to the embarrassing colossal failure of Solyndra).
“The U.S. oil and gas industry has dramatically cut emissions of both methane and CO2 even as it has achieved new records in production.”. The absurdity is mind-boggling. Here is an industry that produces squillions of tons of methane every day, and whose products when used produce brazillions of tons of CO2 every day, hitting even higher new records and getting brownie points for reducing microscopic leakages.
Ummmm . . . despite you not defining “squillions” and “brazillions”, are you really going so far as to assert the US oil and gas industry has not cut net emissions of methane and CO2 by about 14% over the last 15 years?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2024/02/04/why-the-us-leads-the-world-in-reducing-carbon-emissions/?sh=3c2e2241541c
Personally, I don’t view an overall reduction of 14% as “microscopic”, but that’s just me.
Strange how soon after the meme was posted the word shows up again. Someone else asked the same question.
Did you watch Tucker and Bret Weinstein? Under New treaty with WHO, WHO could declare a climate emergency and force everyone to do whatever they want
Of course in the US, a treaty must be ratified by the US Senate.
A signature by the POTUS is not legally binding once challenged to the SCOTUS.
That is assuming that one of the 5 remaining “conservative” justices is not compromised as Roberts already is.
‘That is assuming that one of the 5 remaining “conservative” justices is not compromised as Roberts already is.’
A trip down to the SCIF to see some video will quickly bring them to the Left’s heel.
Well, as for me, they can try . . . but I won’t go willingly into that dark night, and I hope my country would not do differently.
There still exist such things as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in the USA.
The whole CAGW alarmist campaign has always been nothing more than an invented rationale for seizing tyrannical power over the world’s populations. Any specks of coincidental science are just used to inflate the bogeyman to astronomical proportions. Joe Biden is bending over to a new world order where the UN dictates all aspects of living on this planet, for “the people’s own good.” Much like the American armed forces, the slave class in today’s society is made up entirely of volunteers.
It’s call the One World Order.
Story tip – don’t say net zero
The concept of “net zero” has become a political slogan used to start a “dangerous” culture war over the climate, and may be better dropped, the outgoing head of the UK’s climate watchdog has warned.
….
“Net zero has definitely become a slogan that I feel occasionally is now unhelpful, because it’s so associated with the campaigns against it,” he said. “That wasn’t something I expected.”
….
Policymakers should focus instead on what lies behind net zero – investment in the UK’s economy, in ways that would not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but cut energy use, improve national security, clean up the air and protect nature and the countryside,
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/net-zero-has-become-unhelpful-slogan-says-outgoing-head-of-uk-climate-watchdog
“I love democracy. I love the Republic. The power you give me, I will lay down once this crisis has abated.” – Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.
Beatings will continue until morale has improved.
Story Tip
Meanwhile,buyer resistance to EVs in the UK seems to be real. This is from the Telegraph:
[this isn’t right, it was 20% last year for BEVs, https://www.perplexity.ai/search/uk-ev-market-Qyg5LiYUTMu9nzaXlT6kdA%5D
Something is going to have to give here. The car companies could restrict the new cars they are making to correspond to their EV sales. If they make fewer ICE cars, and manage to continue to sell the same number of BEVs as now, that would solve their problem. But in that case expect layoffs and large losses as revenues collapse. Those are going to be swingeing reductions in ICE sales.
Or, the Government could reduce or eliminate the fines and the EV quota.
And remember, that this is going to get a lot worse in the next few years if this buyers strike continues. Because next year the BEV quota is 28%.
Last year was quite promising, about 20% of total sales were BEVs and it was a large sales year at around 1.9 million units. The problem is the 22% quota applies to pure battery EVs, and they were about 15% so far this year. And of course, next year the quota rises to 28%. Something is going to have to give.
Either politics reverses policies or car dealers will stop dealing in new cars altogether. The cheap EVs are from China. The Greens will have to hug the Chinese juggernaut to push them (and solar panels, wind turbines and batteries). If you oppose China you kill the Green Agenda because the west has no capabilities. Or i should say: might have the capabilities but cannot compete. If you stop chinese imports the price w continue to rise even in times of low consumer confidence and willingness to transit fr ICEs to EVs.
Second hand car prices are going up and up.EV sales are going down down. What can stop that trajectory?
Yes something is going to have to give.
Of that 15% sales of BEVs only 9% were to private buyers. The general public is not taking to BEVs and Petrol ICEs took a 56% market share in the first 3 months of 2024.
I hope that it is not too off topic to mention the new post on notrickszone :
https://notrickszone.com/2024/04/23/3-physicists-use-experimental-evidence-to-show-co2s-capacity-to-absorb-radiation-has-saturated/
about the long running (since 1900) argument on whether the effect of CO2 is saturated at the present level of 400ppm.
I know that this is a discussion that has taken place here not infrequently in the past and no doubt Rud has mentioned it in one of his ebooks , but is there a consensus here on the topic . The pursuit of Net Zero in the UK is likely to have frightening consequences and if it is unnecessary that is just “twisting a knife in the wound”.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/bbc-rejoices-as-britain-commits-economic-suicide-in-pursuit-of-net-zero/
Wokechusetts already has declared a climate emergency. It’s a full court press by all agencies. Everything they publish mentions it and how that agency will contribute to slaying the carbon beast. There is almost zero resistance.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Wrong its only a small number of greenie towns and cities
https://www.hadleyma.org/climate-change-committee/pages/list-ma-cities-and-towns-declare-climate-emergency
You are wrong- the state has declared a climate emergency. On top of that, communities can make the same idiotic declaration. That’s why the state has a net zero policy. And, read almost anything by any state agency- they all talk about it. Especially, of course, the Energy and Environment agency.
Ha ha . You fallen for the climate Extinction Rebellion fraud.
Self declared my friend, or as they call it a ‘Draft resolution” of their own making
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts declares that a Climate & Ecological Emergency threatens our cities and towns, state, region, nation, civilization, humanity, and the natural worldhttps://xrboston.org/climate-emergency
Im amazed you are so easily conned, let me guess theres a pattern in other areas ?
wow, worse than I thought
https://xrboston.org/climate-emergency
I would not get too worked up over this fear. Sure, it is possible Biden might declare a “climate emergency” to do what the author says he wants to do, but the United States of America is not an autocratic dictatorship, the Administrative branch has no statutory authority to do this, and both Congress and the Courts will act to restrain any such declaration. SCOTUS in particular would likely be very quick to issue its own emergency ruling overturning whatever climate emergency Biden declares. Politically, such a stupid act would end the Biden administration, as it would piss off the vast majority of Americans that he is damaging our way of life, and it would also make him look pathetically weak to do such a thing and see Congress and the Courts quickly swat him down.
The LNG export restriction policy is drastically less sensitive and damaging than declaring a “climate emergency” to shut down all forms of fossil fuel production, which would bring America to its knees and precipitate an economic and social emergency vastly worse than the COVID shutdowns were. Also, an argument can be made that lot of Americans who are not leftwing climate nuts would prefer that natural gas producers NOT ship a lot of our domestic gas overseas with the effect of driving up gas prices domestically.
But if Biden wants to campaign on destroying America as we know it, he is welcome to it. That is not a winning message.
Besides… Biden thinks he already declared a “climate emergency”…
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/09/biden-climate-emergency-00110486#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWe've%20already%20done%20that,%2460%20billion%20climate%20control%20facility.%E2%80%9D
Problem solved… Just like when he cured cancer when he was VP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAIHRXZwUwM
Or how he would have won the Heisman Trophy, if not for Roger Staubach…
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/11/19/remarks-by-president-biden-and-first-lady-jill-biden-before-military-families-movie-screening-norfolk-va/
Maybe instead of calling him “Brandon,” we should call him Walter Mitty… 😉
Interesting. Bellino graduated in 1960, Staubach matriculated in 1961. Is there anything Biden either doesn’t lie about or screw up? (Rhetorical question).
It is called confabulation, making things up after the functional intellect has failed. Well into dementia, my mom was much better than Brandon. She could articulate whole stories that never failed to convince the health visitors she was 3/4 functional.
Lets see:
They took YEARS to determine that forcing the military to take the MRNA therapy was illegal.
They never ruled on the ability of a Governor to change election laws where the Constitution provides that only the Legislatures of the States have that authority.
It took over a for them to declare Brandon’s student loan forgiveness illegal.
Nope, you are WRONG about them doing some “very quick” action.
Nailed it. There’s a big difference between The Constitution (the document) and Constitutional Law (the interpretation). From my perspective, the latter could be ‘modeled’ as a biased random walk, where the ‘bias’ generally favors the expansion of Federal power. While there have been a number of Dred-full rulings since its inception, the Court effectively became the Left’s doormat when it caved-in to FDR’s fascist New Deal pursuant to the Carolene Products case.
Why do you think “they” are trying to take guns away from us?
We have a Constitutional duty to overthrow a tyrant/dictator.
SCOTUS rules quickly on matter having immediate major impacts. They’ve done it repeatedly.
Sloppy writing conflates the strategy and what it could be used for.
An emergency declaration could also be used to override some regulations. A climate emergency declaration could override barriers to construction of transmission lines to reduce the cost of electricity, or ease the construction of gas pipelines to reduce flaring in the Permian.
All possible, but unlikely.
could override barriers to construction of transmission lines
Perhaps, but what would give anyone reason to believe that would be more likely than curtailing FF production or usage or other similar “strategies”?
And if it could also be used to do that, why would we want to give anyone the power to do so, on the chance they might do something we think is good?
Just musing.. Would it be worth it to endure the pain of the consequences of such an action to wake people to the realities of what “green” really is? But I am afraid that once they get that control, they will not let go, regardless of the consequences.
If re-elected, it will be done early in that administration. They will do it, but not where it might cost them the election. But I am under no illusion that progressives will eventually get what they want – total dominance for our own mythical good.
From the above article”
“. . . the idea being considered again by White House officials of having President Biden declare a climate emergency so he can . . .”
What’s up with that ??? . . . President Joe Biden has on many previous occasions publicly declared “climate change™ ” to be a current existential threat.
Since when does an “emergency” merit more attention than an “existential threat”?
Oh . . . wait . . . never mind, I forgot to account for the vocabulary—let alone IQ level—of the average US voter these days 😳
When the President actually declares an Emergency, not an existential threat which is election speak.
I don’t wish to be called a conspiracy-minded person, an alarmist, but the Democratic party has always contained a thread of fascistic impulses, and in the past few years has begun to explicitly resemble the German NSDAP. Look at their rapidly evolving position on Jews, Gazans, Israel, Zionism, etc. for some grounding in my concerns.
Declaration of a national emergency gives the people who pull Joe Biden’s strings more or less absolute power — the power to confiscate property, declare martial law, direct economic activity, send the military overseas on any adventure, direct the military to oppress individual states, and, I know this is difficult to believe, but imprison their political opponents on any flimsy basis. Yet, as far as we are told, folks in the Whitehouse are concerned that this much power is still inadequate to the task of containing a climate crisis.
Joe Biden, America’s Witchfinder General.
Today’s democrat party, who “wants to save our precious democracy!” is no different from the ruling party in George Orwell’s 1984.
‘…but the Democratic party has always contained a thread of fascistic impulses…’
A thread? If fascism is the form of socialism in which the State effectively controls the use of private property, there hasn’t been a non-fascist Democrat in the White House since Grover Cleveland. Unfortunately, the Republicans are only marginally better.
Funny thing is, in the 1930s and 1940, Germany has a Department of Homeland Security.
’nuff said.
Electing Biden was a crazy idea. We The People got what they wanted… good and hard.
This is an interesting post from the NoTricksZone
3 Physicists Use Experimental Evidence To Show CO2’s Capacity To Absorb Radiation Has Saturated (notrickszone.com)
One should be concerned that they appear to have used a very broad band analysis…no mention of the 8-14 micron atmospheric window, etc. These days, you need something like Hitran or at least Modtran to figure out the change in saturation (which is minor), but H&vanW work out to be 3 watts/sq.M per 2xCO2….which is about a degree of warming per 2xCO2 assuming a ratio of 1.66 TOA versus Surface IR ratio….
I’m not sure about the saturation issue. I don’t even understand from a physics perspective how a cooler atmosphere can warm a warmer earth’s surface. With gas molecules near the surface colliding billions of times a second, CO2 molecules excited by “photon” absorption pass on the energy through collision, not re-radiation. As far as I can tell, the “greenhouse story” totally ignores the surface temperature impact of gravity acting on atmospheric mass to create surface air pressure. I find this just weird. If N2 was stripped from the atmosphere, air pressures would fall, and temperatures would fall along with it. Right?
This has been answered many times. The atmosphere does not directly warm the surface. However it does regulate how fast the heat from the surface is dissipated.
No, it hasn’t. Ok, so you don’t believe in adiabatic heating and cooling. As long as there is free convection, slowing how fast the heat dissipates from the surface doesn’t increase the surface temperature.
Yes, but I object to expressing IR as “heat radiation.” IR is electromagnetic energy, not kinetic energy.
I also note one of our esteemed posters, Richard Greene posted a comment.
I am not sure I understand your comment. Heat is a process. It is the transfer of thermal energy between two bodies at different temperatures. IR radiation is definitely not kinetic energy, I never said it was.
Biden was “at best” a C student in college. Joe grabs onto issues like climate change because they are polarizing and his greatest challenges are from opponents that don’t buy the alarmist climate change fiction. It’s time we pull the curtain back on smokin’ Joe and expose him for the phony that he truly is.
’Pulling the curtain back on smokin’ Joe’ would require the media to perform its obligated role as civic watchdog in exchange for its protected status under the Constitution. The failure of the media to do so, however, stems from its having been mostly compromised by its increasing affiliation with the Left.
Why don’t we just turn off everything for a day or 2 and see what the reactions are, especially from the climate activist youth who would not be able to access social media.
“Emergency Powers” by the Executive Branch in the US should only be legal if Congress doesn’t have time to convene and approve or disapprove or modify the actions taken for each and every “emergency” as they come up. (Congress could also say there is no “emergency”.)