President Biden: Making Russia Great Again

By Peter Murphy

President Joe Biden last week removed sanctions against Russian companies to allow completion of the massive Nord Stream 2 wind turbine and solar energy project so that Russia can supply this renewable energy abundance to U.S.-allied nations in western Europe. Gotta fight global warming and reverse climate change, don’t ya know!!

Oh, wait. Let me rephrase that paragraph:

President Joe Biden recently removed economic sanctions against Russian companies to allow completion of a massive Nord Stream 2 wind turbine and solar energy GAS PIPELINE project so that Russia can supply this renewable FOSSIL FUEL energy abundance to U.S.-allied nations in western Europe. Gotta fight global warming and reverse climate change, don’t ya know!!

The opening paragraph, of course, is incorrect; the latter paragraph above is the accurate account of what occurred.

This incident reveals so much about the political and media class in America, it is hard to know where to begin. There are endless adjectives to describe this action by the Biden administration: cynical, dishonest, unserious, unprincipled, weak, hypocritical and, yes — cruel.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken explained the president’s waiver of sanctions by saying the “actions demonstrate the administration’s commitment to energy security in Europe.” The administration’s “commitment” to America’s energy security, by contrast, is the growing problem.

The first thing Joe Biden did as president, on the afternoon of his inaugural, was cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline project that was to transport oil from Canada through the U.S. Up to 10,000 current and future jobs, many of them union labor, were canceled with that action, and gas prices have been increasing ever since from this and other actions.

The anti-domestic energy policies of President Biden continued, including halting new energy leases on federal lands, which further harms workers in communities in New Mexico, Texas and other energy-producing states.

Joe Biden and the global warming crusaders advising him have made the trade-off that American jobs and economic well-being must be sacrificed to keep the planet from warming another degree in temperature in the next 30 to 80 years — and also because their wealthy Green donor class demands climate action. That is, save the planet from climate changing to the point of what they claim is an “existential threat” for the first time in the 4.5 billion years of Earth’s existence.

For the Biden administration, cancelling energy pipelines and losing American jobs and livelihoods do not matter in the cause of fighting climate change; but allowing Russia to complete its pipeline to sell more product that is supposedly harming the planet and threatening our existence is warranted. Our German and other European allies are happy. Russia’s president-for-life, Vladimir Putin, also is happy with our president’s action, even though the media and other political opponents (including Biden) kept telling us he is modern evil personified, who tried to “influence” American elections.

President Biden’s removal of sanctions on Russian companies, primarily the majority state-owned corporation, Gazprom, will ensure completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and reverses the policy imposed by President Trump and Congress. Among President Trump’s concerns was European nations and fellow members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance with the U.S., should not be dependent on adversarial Russia for their energy. Mr. Trump also wanted to Europe to instead purchase more of natural gas from the U.S., which helps American workers and the larger economy.

With Mr. Biden’s action to remove sanctions and enable the gas pipeline to proceed, it turns out Vladimir Putin may not be such a bad guy after all, and has a new friend in the White House.

Even more cynical, Biden’s action indicates carbon emissions and climate change are not so bad, either.

This pipeline episode is a microcosm of the larger fraudulence and dishonesty of climate change policies and politics. If Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, John Kerry, et. al., were genuine about climate, then the administration what have retained sanctions on this pipeline. Moreover, they would be much tougher on China for the multitude of coal plants it is constructing domestically and world-wide.

Instead, the Biden administration is intent on damaging (uh, “transforming”) our own country and preventing smaller, developing nations from raising their living standards by accessing more oil and gas through World Bank financing and other means, but is all about appeasing larger nations’ energy appetites.

The politically powerful and financially robust climate change industry is what drives the Biden administration’s green policies, which are aimed at American workers and our own living standards. But Joe Biden and his crew dare not upset alleged climate malefactors like Russia, China, Iran, and others, which further demonstrates how unserious is any “threat” of continual, natural climate change on humanity and the planet.

Author

Peter Murphy

Peter Murphy is Senior Fellow at CFACT. He has researched and advocated for a variety of policy issues, including education reform and fiscal policy, both in the non-profit sector and in government in the administration of former New York Governor George Pataki. He previously wrote and edited The Chalkboard weblog for the NY Charter Schools Association, and has been published in numerous media outlets, including The Hill, New York Post, Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal. Twitter: @PeterMurphy26 Website: https://www.petermurphylgs.com/

From cfact.org