Biden's Fossil-Fuel Fumble

So how did the last debate go?  Joe Biden presented himself well by showing empathy and knowledge regarding COVID-19, racial justice, and immigration.  Trump was more restrained and civil, meaning that he lied through his teeth quietly.

Biden did leave one wrinkle, though.  He opened himself up to an issue that Trump can use against him in the few remaining days in the presidential campaign.  And it's not his son Hunter.  Biden reiterated his opposition to ending hydraulic fracturing to extract oil and gas from the ground (though he opposes allowing it on federal land) but insisted the he wants to see it phased out while making a transition to cleaner energy.

"Oh, transition," Trump said, with a tone suggesting sarcasm.  "That's a big statement."

And it could be a big f---in' deal, to cop a phrase Biden once used.  Trump went on to say that Biden's stand on hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," would be dangerous for the economy.

"Because basically what he’s saying is he’s going to destroy the oil industry," Trump continued.  "Will you remember that, Texas? Will you remember that, Pennsylvania? Oklahoma? Ohio?" 

Here Biden let himself open to charges - charges that will continue to the end of the campaign - that his energy policy will cost oil workers and gas workers their jobs in those states, especially Pennsylvania, which is a must-win state for Biden.  Bear in mind that Pennsylvania is the the state where the American oil industry began in 1859, when Edwin L. Drake drilled the first oil well in the United States.  Fossil-fuel development is a hydraulically fractured keystone in the Keystone State.  And if Trump succeeds in getting enough oil workers and gas workers to doubt that Biden's policy is good for them - even though Biden would help them get new and better-paying jobs - that means that just enough voters in Pennsylvania could tip the state to Trump and possibly give him the Presidency again.

Biden not only supports a careful transition to cleaner energy, he supports ending tax subsidies for the oil companies.  Which would make gasoline more expensive.  Which would mean we'd have to buy smaller cars - like this Volkswagen Polo, which is currently unavailable in America.

Not surprisingly, I wouldn't have a problem with that.  But most Americans, who consider cheap gasoline a birthright, would.  Expensive gasoline means that people would have to give up their SUVs.  You can imagine a conservative columnist saying, "First our guns, now our sort utility vehicles!"  (Actually, I don't have to imagine it - Cal Thomas wrote that back in 1998.) And don't forget pickup trucks.  The Ford F-150 is America's bestselling motor vehicle, and Chris Matthews, back when he was covering the 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign before he was forced into early retirement, said that no Democratic presidential candidate should dare make anyone think he or she would come for their F-150s. Electric vehicles?  Please.  The sort of swing voters Biden and Trump are competing for dismiss electric cars as wimpish, namby-pamby appliance cars for self-righteous, latte-sipping, foreign-film-loving white-collar bourgeois liberals.   

Some folks think Trump's hardline pro-fracking stance may not help him much out of concern for the environment, as this Daily Beast column suggests.  Maybe.  But when you remember that the election results in Pennsylvania, like other swing states such as Michigan, Florida and possibly some other state that doesn't require a front license plate for your Jeep Grand Cherokee, could be decided by a couple thousand or even a couple hundred votes, Trump doesn't have to reach every voter to win.  Just a very small bunch of them.

John Hickenlooper: His Name Is His Smallest Liability

John Hickenlooper should be a strong dark-horse candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination after relatively successful stints as mayor of Denver and as governor of Colorado.  So why do I have a problem with him?

Mainly because he supported fracking in Colorado.

Yes, I know he had hydraulic fracturing in his state follow strong, tough regulations to capture waste and methane emissions, which prevented 95% of volatile organic compounds and methane that leaked out.  That's as may be; he still supported fracking.  And five percent leakage is five percent too high.

Then there was his most recent comment about male presidential candidates being asked if they would pick a woman for a running mate.  Hickenlooper rhetorically asked why female presidential candidates aren't being asked if they would pick a man for a running mate.

Because the one female presidential candidate of a major party that we've had did just that?   

Hickenlooper seems to be interested in what's been called "woman issues."  He made his sexual history with women a focal point of his memoir, describing a sordid sexual history that would embarrass David Crosby and would have embarrassed Wilt Chamberlain. Say what you will about his fellow Coloradan Gary Hart; Hart believed that his own history with women was his own business.

You've probably heard accusations of male privilege unfairly leveled at other male Democratic candidates for the Presidency.  In Hickenlooper's case, they're well deserved.  It's a shame that Colorado has never produced a President, but the one thing worse than Hart's failure to win the White House would be Hickenlooper succeeding at that effort. 

Democratic presidential candidates: They come, I take a swipe at them, they go.  Who's up next? 

Trump To Planet: F*** YOU!

Okay, everybody, resist this!

Donald Trump took his biggest swing yet at stopping environmental progress last week, reversing Barack Obama's clean-power plan to reduce carbon emissions from coal-powered electricity-generating plants, regulations on curbs of emissions from oil production, restrictions on hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking"), and a ban on coal leasing on federal lands.  "We're going to go in a different direction," a senior White House official told reporters ahead of last Tuesday's order. "The previous administration devalued workers with their policies. We can protect the environment while providing people with work."

Ah yes, work in the energy sector . . . opportunities for work in every part of it - oil, coal, gas - except solar, wind and other renewables.

I feel like a cannibal who's overeaten - I want to throw up my hands.  Although the Paris agreement, which Trump wants to cancel, was not mentioned, this policy reversal means that the U.S. Government won't be doing its part to curb greenhouse-gas emissions at least for the next four years - and by 2021, it may be too late.   I sure would like to know how we can protect the environment and provide all of these jobs in a fossil-fuel economy.  Maybe Trump has a secret plan, like the one Nixon had to end the war in Vietnam (which the North Vietnamese did by winning it).

The good news in this - and I know I'm grasping at straws here - is that environmental groups are already planning to sue to prevent this rollback from taking place, and there are all sorts of legal hurdles to keep Trump's actions from taking effect immediately.  Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson - a former oilman, no less - supports the Paris agreement, meaning we still need to find a a way to honor it it if Trump takes Tillerson's advice and stays in.  Several businesses that use a lot of energy - including General Electric and Wal-Mart! - are going ahead with their own plans to reduce fossil-fuel dependency.  Also, several states, like California, are pursuing their own environmental agendas and pushing for greenhouse-gas reductions.

State-level action.  And isn't that what EPA chief Scott Pruitt wants? ;-)

Oh yeah, where I live, we've had a couple of inches of rain in the past week, and we may get a couple more this week.  I know this is a rainy time of year, but that much rain in under two weeks?  The line is, "April showers bring May flowers," not "April downpours bring May flowers!"  Climate change is making weather more extreme.

Did I happen to mention that my area is under a flood watch as I type this?

P.S.  Don't start acting smug about all this, Hill-bots; Hillary Clinton promoted fracking in other countries as Secretary of State and said that anti-fracking activists should "get a life."