The insanity of woke-ism is permeating our society, ruining our culture, and preventing law-abiding citizens from working for a living and taking care of their families. This scourge has already infiltrated academia, the media, and our corporate boardrooms, and it is now taking over functions of our own government, with the bill being handed to the taxpayers.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service has now begun offering “Ecogrief” training to its employees. Yes, you read that correctly: Ecogrief. Although it sounds like a parody of leftism, sadly, it is not.
Ecogrief is nothing more than a made-up condition that provides a pat on the head for delicate federal employees who are allegedly struggling with a sense of trauma as they believe they are witnessing a cataclysmic collapse of the Earth’s environment.
It might be comical if it were a private company wasting its own money, but it’s not. It is our federal government, and that makes it your money that is being misappropriated and used to further a political agenda. The explicit purpose of this agenda is to increase the cost of putting food on your table, a roof over your head, and gas in your car.
It is your money that is being used for environmental activism instead of to pay down some of our nearly $32 trillion in national debt.
It’s your money being used to convince people that the United States is evil, despite the fact that we have lifted more people out of poverty, provided a better standard of living, and provided more opportunities for more people than any other country in the history of mankind. And at the same time, we’ve managed our natural resources in a way that supports our economy, protects our environment, and safeguards our country’s sovereignty.
This latest phony malady is just another part of a larger-scale assault on both common sense and American energy. And it disturbed me enough that I took to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to draw attention to it.
The Biden administration has gone to war on our energy industries by blocking the extraction, development, transport, and use of our abundant and clean fossil fuels. In other words, they’re opposed to any energy resource that actually works, such as coal, oil and gas, and uranium.
They seek to make us energy paupers, thereby forcing the United States to beg other countries for the resources we need to power this country and our economy. And this is a war is being fought on multiple fronts.
Permitting is now longer, more complicated, more expensive, and designed to limit new sources of energy production throughout every step of the process.
Oil and gas leases have declined by 97% compared to this point in Donald Trump’s presidency.
And despite President Biden’s irresponsibly tapping into our Strategic Petroleum Reserves, gas prices remain stubbornly high, and natural gas – a major source of home heating for half of America – is expected to increase by 25%.
Coal, which provides a quarter of America’s energy, is critical to manufacturing, and is vital to not only my state of Wyoming, but to anyone who wants to ensure access to clean and affordable energy. Nonetheless, coal is under constant attack by the ever-increasing and more restrictive rules issued by unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.
And who suffers? The citizens of this country, with the poorest among us suffering the most.
I believe that there is truly a special place in hell for people who adopt policies that are designed to create energy poverty – a situation where families must choose among buying food, heating their homes, or putting gas in their cars. This will be one of Biden’s lasting legacies: Shared misery for everyone except the elite.
We cannot afford the woke energy agenda, and we certainly shouldn’t provide cry rooms for the victims of the fictitious affliction of ecogrief.
But, while it may seem that there is a non-stop cycle of bad policies coming out of D.C., we must never give up. With the Republicans back in control of the House, we must pass legislation to claw back power from the administrative state – and I am filing multiple bills to do just that. We can unleash our affordable and plentiful American Energy and we can call out the nonsense.
And I have a message to our friends at the Fish & Wildlife Service: You may want to get in a good cry and take that Ecogrief seminar now – before we legislate it out of existence.
Harriet Hageman, a Republican, is the lone member of the U.S. House of Representatives for the State of Wyoming.