President Joe Biden delivered the 2024 State of the Union deal with on Thursday night time underneath what’s at all times one of the vital intense spotlights of the yr. This comes as he prepares for a common election marketing campaign towards former President Donald Trump.
I tuned in briefly, however I don’t take pleasure in political theater. Due to this fact, after the speech was over, I learn by the transcript. My major curiosity is to see what the speaker stated about power.
Provided that President Biden’s power insurance policies have come underneath assault, I felt sure that he would point out that the U.S. is at the moment producing extra power than any nation ever has, which is an unbelievable achievement. That is primarily as a result of shale-enabled oil and fuel increase that started almost 20 years in the past.
Simply this week, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wrote on the social media web site X:
“Welcome 2Pres Biden’s America the place the fed govt chooses power dependence over power DOMINANCE AND INDEPENDENCE.”
It’s a typical assault towards Biden. Donald Trump usually says that if he’s reelected, we’re going to “Drill! Drill! Drill!” — as if we didn’t produce extra oil in 2023 than in any yr in U.S. historical past.
Thus, I believed Biden would spotlight U.S. power manufacturing within the State of the Union deal with. However he barely talked about power in any respect.
The phrase “oil” was solely talked about within the speech as soon as, and that was within the context of ending tax breaks on “Large Oil.” Biden didn’t point out pure fuel in any respect within the speech, and he solely talked about power thrice, and that was at all times within the context of “clear power.”
So, the unbelievable power achievements being recorded within the U.S. had been utterly ignored within the State of the Union deal with. Why?
Understand that the deal with is a political speech. One among Biden’s greatest aims is to energise his base, and one of many issues he campaigned on was addressing local weather change.
The Biden Administration has focused the elimination of fossil fuels for power technology within the U.S. by 2035. He has handed laws focused at dashing up the transition from fossil fuels to wash power, and at slowing down or halting fossil gasoline improvement.
File U.S. oil and fuel manufacturing are inconvenient info that run opposite to the administration’s acknowledged aims. Regardless of the assaults from Republicans, Biden might be not eager to remind his base that U.S. oil and fuel manufacturing each proceed to develop.
A second issue could also be that Biden is aware of that report manufacturing comes regardless of his insurance policies, and never due to them. Presidents usually take credit score for issues that they’d little to do with, however on this case, Biden’s insurance policies have been working to thwart continued enlargement of oil and fuel. As such, it might have been particularly disingenuous to take credit score for this.
Nonetheless, President Biden is in a marketing campaign for reelection. Clear power has contributed to our report power manufacturing, even when it wasn’t the first motive. I’d have thought, at a minimal Biden would have identified the extraordinary achievement of the U.S. producing extra power than every other nation in historical past. He may have left it as much as his critics to level out that it’s primarily attributable to increasing oil and fuel manufacturing.