Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal turned the tables on President Obama yesterday, accusing the White House of being "science deniers" when it comes to energy.
"We now face an administration that is composed of science deniers when it comes to energy and the environment," Jindal said at a lunch with reporters at The Heritage Foundation. "You are looking at an administration that is holding our economy hostage to their radical views. It really is an article of religious faith amongst this administration the way they approach these questions of policy."
Pressed after his presentation to identify what specific science the White House was denying, Jindal rattled off a lengthy list:
Look, the most obvious one is the Keystone Pipeline. For five years they said they were studying this and their own State Department says it will have no discernible environmental impact. It will create tens of thousands of construction jobs. It would boost both of our country's economies and energy self sufficiency. So the Keystone Pipeline is the first example.
The second example is when you look at the EPA's policies, again even if you accept the premise behind their attempts to regulate CO2 admissions from power plants, not even the EPA's regional office could explain to us how they came up with their numbers for the states or what the rationale was. They basically said, 'Go to DC, we don't know where the 40 percent came from.' And again in my state's own personal experience there is no rational connection ... It's not like we're a state where we have a lot of outdated facilities that can be easily upgraded. That is not the case in our state. There is not that low hanging fruit.
Third, when you look at their approach to the environment, simply shifting energy intensive industries overseas, at a time where China now emits more CO2 than America, the growth is coming from the developing world, they've added more new coal capacity in the last few years than our entire coal capacity, the idea that unilateral actions that hurt our economy are going to somehow benefit the environment makes no scientific sense.
Exporting those energy intensive industries, if that's what we succeed in doing, will actually make the environment worse. Those activities will now be performed in countries with weaker environmental regulations. Today we export about ten percent of our coal. And now this president has said, 'We are going to bankrupt anyone who wants to build a new coal facility' ... 'we're going to increase electricity prices,' so as a result instead of us using our coal we export it and so now China and India are going to burn it, does nothing to help the environment. All we are doing is giving them more affordable electricity to compete with our manufacturers.So there are several other examples, when you look at the regulatory overreach this administration that has opposed efforts to do cost benefit analyses before they do environmental regulations. So you look under MACT [Maximum Achievable Control Technology] they will justify the most expensive intervention even without a proportionate benefit to emission reductions or environmental benefit, again ignoring the analysis and the facts.
So I think time and time again the left, they like to tell us they are the ones who are following science and we are the science deniers, but I think over all their approach to energy is telling. You look at the shifting ... and it's pretty startling how quickly they shifted their views on natural gas. Natural gas was the left's favorite energy, at least fossil energy, source for a long time until fracking happened.
When it was scarce and expensive they loved natural gas. When it was $13 they loved natural gas. As soon as it was affordable, all of a sudden they decided they didn't like it so much. I think that if they are honest, they want energy to be scarce and expensive because it allows the federal government to be more involved in our lives and it allows them to decide what kind of cars you drive, what kind of homes you live in, how we live our lives.
Look I think for much of the left the whole debate about CO2 is really a trojan horse. These are folks that never reality wanted a fee market. These are folks that are always looking for an excuse to impose more government regulation, more government oversight, this is just their latest vehicle to do it.
So in many ways they are hiding behind these claims to use that as a trojan horse to come in and do what they wanted to do anyway.
You can read Jindal's full 48-page report, "Organizing Around Abundance: Making America and Energy Superpower," here.
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