During President Joe Biden’s four years in the White House, the United States, according to Politico, has produced record amounts of oil and natural gas. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, in March 2024, reported that the U.S., under Biden, was producing “more crude oil than any nation at any time.”
But President-elect Donald Trump is promising an even greater emphasis on fossil fuels after he returns to the White House.
Biden, as president, has favored a combination of green energy and fossil fuels. Biden acknowledges climate change as a dangerous and perilous reality and has supported ramping up green energy use without abandoning fossil fuels.
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Trump, in contrast, doesn’t consider climate change a problem and wants to make fossil fuels an even higher priority for the U.S. The president-elect has vowed to “drill, drill, drill,” and he has proposed North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum — Trump’s nominee for secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior — to head a new National Energy Council.
Trump has promised to establish American “energy dominance.” But according to Associated Press (AP) reporter Matthew Daly, his energy goals “are likely to run into real-world limits.”
“Trump’s bid to boost oil supplies — and lower U.S. prices — is complicated by his threat this week to impose 25 percent import tariffs on Canada and Mexico, two of the largest sources of U.S. oil imports,” Daly explains in an article published on November 29. “The U.S. oil industry warned the tariffs could raise prices and even harm national security.”
Scott Lauermann of the American Petroleum Institute is among the fossil fuels promoters who are speaking out.
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Lauermann told AP, “Canada and Mexico are our top energy trading partners, and maintaining the free flow of energy products across our borders is critical for North American energy security and U.S. consumers.”
Meanwhile, Jonathan Elkind — senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy in New York City and a former assistant energy secretary under President Barack Obama — is highly critical of Trump’s emphasis on fossil fuels and his refusal to acknowledge climate change as an “existential” danger.
Elkind told AP, “Failure to focus on climate change as an existential threat to our planet is a huge concern and translates to a very significant loss of American property and American lives.”
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Read the Associated Press’ full article at this link.
