The Biden State Department announced the release of a new guidebook for the U.S. and other countries on Tuesday and — rather than being focused on diplomatic efforts to allow human flourishing or defeating terrorists and those who give them safe harbor — it's all about cutting greenhouse gases, specifically methane, within the oil and gas industry.
Titled "Methane Abatement for Oil and Gas – Handbook for Policymakers," the new result of taxpayer funded work at the Departments of State and Commerce to advance the "Global Methane Pledge and Clean EDGE (Enhancing Development and Growth through Energy)" is little more than the Biden administration's latest attempt to go after oil and gas companies who've already been dealt a series of blows courtesy of the president's crusade to "end" fossil fuels.
📢📚 The Methane Abatement Handbook for policymakers has arrived! In partnership w/ 🌎 experts, @EnergyAtState & @CLDP_DOC created this handbook to empower leaders to reduce methane emissions in oil & gas: https://t.co/zUHzZ8q2CW #CLDP #EnergyTransition
— EnergyAtState (@EnergyAtState) September 26, 2023
A letter from Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in the guidebook repeats the same blather that's become customary for the Biden administration. "Methane emissions are a major contributor to climate change," her letter states. "Abating methane emissions are also a unique opportunity. For that reason, in 2021, the United States and its international partners established the Global Methane Pledge," another worldwide climate-related pact that includes goals and policies not assented to by Congress.
"Under the Pledge, countries commit to collectively reduce methane by 30% by 2030 from 2020 levels," Raimondo explains. "The U.S. and its partners are working now to help countries adopt methane abatement policies, mobilize methane financing, deploy abatement technologies and practices, and reform laws and regulations."
That is, the Biden administration is working to make both the U.S. and other countries around the world as strict and inhospitable to the fossil fuel industry as possible.
Within the more than 200-page "handbook," the Biden administration's guide proposes strict standards for developing countries — standards that require significantly more capital to construct and bring online, making them unreasonable for emerging markets. It also advocates for countries of the world to enact regulatory regimes across the board for existing and mid-level producers.
These regulations, according to the guide, include "prescriptive measures" to "directly require entities to undertake or not undertake specific actions or procedures" including requirements, equipment standards, and bans or moratoriums" along with "performance" requirements to "establish a mandatory performance standard for regulated entities" and economic penalties to "induce action by applying fees or introducing financial incentives for certain behaviors." In addition, the guidebook suggests information requirements under which "regulated entities estimate, measure, and report their emissions to public bodies."
Not only is the Biden administration's latest (yet rather quietly announced) attack on the fossil fuel industry at home and abroad another prescription for suffocating regulations aimed at the ultimate goal of ending oil and gas production, it's also entirely hypocritical.
Despite the handbook being produced, in part, by State Department bureaucrats, the agency isn't living up to existing climate-related pledges, let alone the regulations and requirements being prescribed for the oil and gas industry.
As Townhall noted in previous coverage of the Biden administration's climate hypocrisy, the State Department is supposed to — per a 2021 executive order signed by President Biden — report annually all greenhouse gas emissions from sources owned or controlled by a federal agency such as government vehicles and aircraft, sources that generate electricity used to keep the lights on at federal buildings, and sources not owned by but related to an agency's activities such as business travel.
Despite this requirement for the State Department, an attempt by Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA), Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) to find reported emissions data from the State Department — as they're required to do — turned up nothing. According to the Government Accountability Office, the State Department still does "not have a systematic way to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from," among other means, "U.S. delegation travel."
It's another case of "do as I say, not as I do" from the climate wokescolds within the Biden administration — all for the greater goal of forcing the "green" energy transition that's anything but and ending the use of fossil fuels in the process.
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