Put Y'all Back in Chains, page 15
Who Ya Gonna Believe, Me or Your Lying Eyes?
Assuming that lowering emissions can only occur by mandates and lower economic growth is an article of faith for progressives. In 2021, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts weighed in on energy policy, apparently under the assumption that her knowledge of the oil and gas industry was greater than that of the industry itself.
In February 2021, she demanded that the White House place new limits on the export of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).129 LNG is one of the leading ways of protecting the climate. The energy industry should be encouraged to invest and maximize profits in this sector instead of having limits imposed on them. Encouraging the wide availability of LNG to any wholesaler on the planet would not only help to promote the stated goals of the environmental movement, but it would also lower the market price for everyone. But apparently the short-term political hit against the energy industry was just too hard to resist.
However, this isn’t just a push from Washington; the anti-domestic-energy advocates use every tool they have to make it harder to tap into the amazing U.S. resource of oil and gas. They use federal agency regulation, federal and state courts, and even state regulations to stymie exploration.
The Penn East and Atlantic Coast pipelines have been thwarted even though they would have had lowered energy prices for consumers significantly. The Penn East pipeline was a proposed 116-mile natural gas pipeline connecting Pennsylvania to New Jersey. But due to a lack of water and wetland permits from New Jersey, the project ground to a halt in 2021.130 Similarly, the Atlantic Coast pipeline, a project by Duke Energy and Dominion, was a 600-mile pipeline that would have transported natural gas from West Virginia through Virginia to North Carolina. After endless litigation by opponents, it was canceled.131
Thousands of pages of permit requests meant there were ample opportunities for litigation and pushback. In fact, in both cases, the companies had to win before the U.S. Supreme Court to overcome the efforts of activists in order to proceed, and even that wasn’t enough.
The Mountain Valley pipeline, which would deliver gas from Appalachia to the Southeast, is still in the midst of litigation and may have a similar fate, even though by the fall of 2022 it was more than 94 percent complete.132 Absent explicit congressional authority, federal courts have refused to allow it to go forward, citing environmental risks.133
Late in the summer of 2022, Senator Joe Manchin was able to include an agreement to fast-track environmental permitting rules in exchange for supporting the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.134 Senator Manchin is a major backer of the Mountain Valley pipeline. Whether the pipeline gets a new life or not remains an open question.
Manchin was assured that the upcoming September 2022 Continuing Resolution (CR) would include his preferred language, to allow expedited permitting for energy projects, if he voted for the Inflation Reduction Act. However, the initial effort to include Manchin’s permitting provision failed on the floor of the Senate on September 26th.135 Adding the provision to the CR required sixty votes, and since many of his fellow Democrats like Sanders opposed the provision, and few Senate Republicans would cross over to help him, he wasn’t able to get the provision included.
Foot-soldiers of the Left
It is said that the progressive movement is the lifeblood of the Democrats. Where once there were Blue Dog Democrats, conservative Democrats, and moderates like Bill Clinton that dominated the party priorities, today that is no longer true. Progressives dominate the party and set its course. They believe in government action—federal over state—and public sector action over private sector action. They prefer coercion over volitional behavior. The climate issue is the perfect agenda to exploit their preferences. Progressives in the White House and across America have teamed up to stop domestic energy exploration and development.
Progressives say that the threat from climate change is real and that dramatic change must occur to avoid the consequences. These activists are not as concerned about the “great outdoors” but instead have more of an urban bias, focusing on issues like energy use, food production, and labor movements. Climate activist groups like the Natural Defense Council, the Sierra Club, and the Union of Concerned Scientists push the administration to adopt policies that have never gotten buy-ins from the American people. In the process, they’ve pushed Biden well out of the mainstream. He may choose to call himself a centrist, but his willingness to embrace the agenda of progressives, especially on the environment, belies this claim.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) took the lead in litigation against the KeyStone Pipeline.136 The Sierra Club has heavily pushed electric vehicles and the need for a multi-billion nationwide charging infrastructure, as well as a ban on oil drilling on public lands.137 The Union of Concerned Scientists has successfully pushed for wind and solar energy subsidies as part of its effort to achieve a 100 percent carbon free energy grid by 2035.138
Since 2004, Americans have reported to Gallup that the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated.139 In fact, in 2010 the ratio of Americans saying it’s exaggerated, as opposed to accurately presented, was two to one. After slightly dropping during the Obama presidency, it has almost returned to the two to one ratio.140 And thanks to Biden’s mismanagement of the economy, a spring 2022 CBS poll found that the support for action on the climate had dropped across all demographic groups.141 A May 2022 Gallup survey found that Americans listed climate change in seventh place among seven environmental concerns, including water pollution, air pollution, and shrinking rain forests.142 In a survey of priorities released by the Yale Program on Climate Change in 2020, blacks placed Global Warming sixteenth out of twenty-nine priorities.143 Disaster relief, terrorism, and tax reform ranked higher. Notably, Americans respond at the highest rate in the world that climate fears are overblown.144
The Fish Rots from the Head First
John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, came to America from his native Scotland to explore its beauty, and in the process, he picked up some fairly negative views about blacks and native Americans.145 He often referred to blacks as Lazy “Sambos” and savages146 and was a close friend of Henry Fairfield Osborn, the founder of the American Eugenics Society.147
While the Sierra Club has attempted to make amends for its founder’s provincial thinking, the broader picture of the movement is worth discussing. Today, the environmental movement is not only overwhelmingly white but is made up of elite whites.148 Since the late nineteenth century, working-class whites have been relegated to servant-like roles in the burgeoning environmental movement.149 The leadership after Muir also had fairly narrow views about the usefulness of blacks to the movement, most of them having either owned slaves or used former slaves as cooks, launderers, porters, and as basic labor resources.150 Blacks were barred from being members of groups like the Sierra Club even into the twentieth century;151 until the 1950s, the Sierra Club actively voted to bar blacks from local clubs.152 In fact, the movement didn’t begin to welcome blacks until the civil rights era.153
Not surprisingly, black Americans haven’t flocked to this movement. In 1990, less than 2 percent of the environmental movement was not white. When its leaders were called out about this, they claimed that blacks weren’t interested in the environment.154 Meanwhile, the leadership and supervisors of the green movement are overwhelmingly high income and white.
A 2014 report on the racial make-up of the Sierra Club revealed that less than 5 percent of the 3.2 million rank and file members were black.155 Today the non-white membership of the green movement is only 16 percent, even as the non-white population of the U.S. exceeds 38 percent.156
Working-class people, including most blacks, may not feel welcome in the environmental movement, but they can’t afford to ignore it because it has an outsized influence over the lives of all Americans, including theirs. In fact, the green program is especially costly to groups lower on the income scale. Many activists blame free enterprise for the environmental concerns they identify with, but free enterprise could be the actual solution to their problems. Sadly, they aim to empower themselves to make decisions for their fellow citizens, rather than trusting Americans armed with information to act with care.
By rejecting free markets, they also open themselves to the charge of being socialists or worse.
Here’s the truth: open competitive markets lead to innovation and increases in the standard of living. Progressives, like the Puritans of yore, would rather use mandates, a decline in the standard of living, and government subsidies to achieve their goals.
Progressives Believe You Can Do Anything You Want as Long as It’s Mandatory
Over the last few decades, progressives have made environmentalism one of their chief concerns. This despite the reality that America’s water157, air,158 and lead levels159 are in better shape than any time since the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
The primacy of environmentalism on the Left has pushed the issue to the political forefront, significantly moving it ahead of issues they’ve traditionally been associated with, such as assisting the working class and promoting integration, women’s rights, and education. In fact, only the LGBT agenda remains as prominent for today’s Left as the green agenda. As a consequence, blacks—a core constituency for Biden and the Democrats—increasingly find their concerns are pushed to the back of the political bus.
A balanced and well-rounded environmental movement would keep the concerns of the working class in mind when assessing costs. Rather than pursue policies that raise the cost of housing and energy beyond their reach, incorporating the concerns of the dispossessed would likely make their program more popular with the public, especially with blacks.
Today’s green activists include animal rights supporters, climate alarmists, and environmentalists who seek a more expansive level of federal government authority to achieve their ends. In all three groups, there is a socialist element. Though Americans of all races and background support a balanced approach to environmentalism—one that doesn’t kill jobs or destroy the energy sector—the “greenies” advocate radical solutions that will ultimately cripple America’s economy and her people along the way.
Blacks Hardest Hit
While rising energy costs are a real hardship for many Americans, and all of America is suffering from President Biden’s restrictive energy policies, black Americans are harmed the most. UC Berkeley’s Energy Institute at Haas released a white paper in the summer of 2020 finding that black households pay “significantly” more of their income for energy than whites,160 the gap persisting even when controlling for income, household size, and homeowner status—black homeowners pay $408 more annually for energy.161 (Several earlier studies had also reached this conclusion.162) The study concludes that this energy affordability gap exacerbates wealth and housing disparities.163
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).164
A few weeks later, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) issued a report with a similar finding. According to its September 2020 report How High Are Household Energy Burdens?,165 the median energy burden for black households is 43 percent higher than for non-Hispanic white households (4.2 percent versus 2.9 percent, respectively).166
Tragically, black, Hispanic, and Native American households all face dramatically higher energy burdens—spending a greater portion of their income on energy bills than the rest of America.
Blacks should pay attention when environmentalists chant that natural gas exploration must be ended, because when climate activists succeed, blacks pay more. After record progress was made in lowering the cost of energy in America, the progressive’s renewed war on oil and gas has resulted in record numbers of Americans experiencing “energy poverty” meaning “the lack of access to sustainable modern energy services and products,” which Habitat for Humanity recasts as “a lack of adequate, affordable, reliable, quality, safe and environmentally sound energy services….”167
By some estimates, more than a billion people on the planet suffer from “energy poverty.”168 Thanks to President Biden’s domestic policies, it isn’t just a problem for third world countries. The U.S. has programs in place to ameliorate these concerns, such as the Low Income Housing Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). Created in 1981, LIHEAP is one of many programs that offers grants to needy families to offset energy costs.169 Due to the Biden policies, energy assistance is needed more than ever.170
In a recent CNN Online op-ed, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA) Mark Wolfe said that households across the U.S. are drowning in household-energy-bill debt. At one point during the pandemic, he explained, thirty-three states had policies in place to assist families who can’t pay their utility bills, but by the middle of 2022, all those programs had expired.171
Ironically, as more funds are devoted to assisting poor households, President Biden’s climate policies continue to make the problem worse and, at least according to Professor Tony Reames, head of the Urban Energy Justice Lab at the University of Michigan, they have benefited higher-income communities more than the needy.172
The Energy Information Agency forecast that heating bills would jump by 30 percent for the average household before 2021 closed.173 By the spring of 2022, electricity bills for the first year of Biden’s presidency had been increasing at the fastest rate since 2008.174 Year over year, the rate across America rose 4.3 percent in 2021. For 2022, the rate was projected to increase another 4.3 percent,175 but by the beginning of autumn of 2022, that estimate was revised upwards to 7.5 percent, with some locations like New York and New England experiencing price increases well over 50 percent.176 As this book goes to press, the numbers are projected to get much worse through the winter of 2022-23.177
US EIA Energy Outlook March 8, 2022.
Conclusion
Energy access is essential for all American households. When families are threatened with having their power shut off, they cut back on food and even medicine. An estimated 3.5 million people were disconnected in 2020 and 2021, in thirty-two states and the District of Columbia.178
Statistically, blacks households are more vulnerable than white and Asian households when it comes to energy affordability. In two short years, the Biden Administration has managed to turn America from an energy powerhouse where Americans of all backgrounds had ready access to low-cost fuel to one in which many households struggle with the staggering costs of gasoline and utility bills.
The Biden White House has caved to progressives when it comes to energy and the environment, which has caused repercussions across the board: families that can’t afford gas or the light bill won’t spend the funds needed for tutors for their children, nor can they afford to buy a house in a neighborhood with better schools. An extreme anti-energy agenda doesn’t just starve America’s economy, it undermines the ability of all Americans, including blacks, to achieve the American dream.
While making vigorous claims to be an advocate for blacks and other minorities, the Biden Administration continues to put its climate supporters first, moving the interests of blacks to the back of the political bus.
Chapter Six
Killing Blacks Better: The Biden Approach to Abortion
Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of a Beloved Community where all are treated with respect and dignity…. Today, we are compelled to continue Uncle Martin’s fight by standing up for those who are treated as less than human because of their helplessness and inconvenience. The unborn are as much a part of the Beloved Community as are newborns, infants, teenagers, adults, and the elderly. Too many of us speak of tolerance and inclusion, yet refuse to tolerate or include the weakest and most innocent among us in the human family. As we celebrate the life of Uncle Martin, let us renew our hearts and commit our lives to treating each other, whatever our race, status, or stage of life, as we would want to be treated. Let us let each other live.
— Alveda C. King1
Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., tells her story about the abortion culture in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including personally having two abortions, and how she came to realize the error of her ways.2 It was MLK’s father, Martin Luther King, Sr., who taught her that abortion was a terrible crime, against blacks in particular, and helped her turn her life around. She would eventually have six living babies and go on to be a great pro-life champion.3 Indeed, to this day, she is one of the leading advocates of the unborn, not just in the U.S., but around the world.
Alveda King explains that abortion was an issue in America well before Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. In 1950, when she was born, her mother (Naomi Ruth King) considered an abortion, fearing that childbirth would prevent her from going to college.4 Even then, when abortion was illegal, there were groups promoting it, often within black neighborhoods.
A Grandfather’s Dream
Alveda recounts, “There was an organization in town called the Birth Control League. Right around that time, they changed their name to Planned Parenthood. They passed out fliers, especially in African-American schools, saying, ‘A woman has the right to choose what she does with her body, and we can help you not have a lot of babies.’”5
Naomi King took the flyer to her pastor and father-in-law Martin Luther King Sr. (father of MLK), who successfully swayed Naomi to keep the child. He told her, “That’s not a lump of flesh. That’s my granddaughter. I saw her in a dream three years ago. She has bright skin and bright red hair, and she’s going to bless many people.”6 Alveda King was born, bright red hair and all, and has proven to be a blessing to many people.
