Commentary

Sure, 81 million people voted for Joe Biden in 2020, even though he promised to end our dependence on fossil fuels, but how many of those voters actually believed he would follow through and take us on a ruinous path on his first day in office.

With a stroke of his pen, he took away our pride in being energy independent and set us on a course to transition our energy needs to wind and solar, but it is a cadre of unelected green environmentalists who are controlling the agenda.

John Kerry travels around the world spreading fear of global warming and climate change as Biden’s climate envoy.  Often criticized for flying on his “gas guzzling” private jet, Kerry claims its use is paid for with carbon offsets.  You just know we taxpayers are footing the bill.

Kerry hasn’t held an elected office since his last reelection to the Senate 15 years ago. With his selection by former President Obama to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state in January 2013, Kerry began a 10-year stint as an unelected servant.

Kerry’s success as a U.S. lobbyist for climate control hasn’t exactly been noteworthy.  Last week, he made his seventh trip in 18 months to Mexico, where he has had little success.

Marie Harf, the former lightweight spokesperson for Kerry at State, continues to defend her old boss, appearing on Fox’s Outnumbered saying, “We have to address this (climate change) and you may not like John Kerry, but his message is one we have to listen to.”  No we don’t.

Then there’s Jennifer M. Granholm, the unelected Secretary of Energy, who is attempting to advance the president’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, claiming it will lead to good-paying union clean energy jobs.

She would have you believe, “There is no greater challenge facing our nation and our planet than the climate crisis.”

Michael S. Regan became the first black man and second person of color to lead the EPA in March 2021, continuing a string of unelected positions in his resume. His qualifications?  He developed a passion for the environment while hunting and fishing with this father and grandfather.

Regan now heads a regulatory agency of some 17,000 government employees watching over our environment with the power to post fines.  Perhaps the best-known activity of the EPA is its establishment of Café standards for automobile and truck fuel efficiency.

Deb Haaland, who became the first native American to be named to the cabinet, was Biden’s choice to become Secretary of the Interior.  As an unelected individual, she has sided with the left on interior matters, and only recently went along with the ConocoPhillips drilling venture in Alaska.

Two unelected officials, Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary, and Michael J. Hsu, Acting Comptroller of the Currency, have been in the news lately with the failure of two U.S. banks.

Yellen, who declared that inflation was “transitory” last December, is responsible for formulating and recommending domestic and financial, economic, and tax policy.

Hsu leads the OCC, which is an independent branch of the Treasury Department with experts in bank examination, law, risk management, economics and accounting.

Surely, they supported Biden’s guidelines for investments in ESG woke capitalism promoting environmental, social and governance while suppressing investments in fossil fuels.

Republicans in Congress must do what they can to put the clamps on their over ambitious climate change agenda and, where possible, make them accountable for their actions.  In the meantime, our goal for 2024 should be to restore our means of energy and slow the pace of renewables.

Energy and Climate News

Here at home, we learned that Ford Motor Co. will lose $3 billion this year on its electric vehicle business, and we taxpayers could be on the hook.  Ford can sustain losses on EVs in part because it benefits from subsidies up and down the EV supply, production and service chain with battery production, consumer sales and charging stations, but Biden’ Inflation Reduction Act essentially helped make EV production too big to fail.

Good news from Shell PLC’s new CEO, Wael Sawan, who announced plans in Houston to build on his success in oil and gas last year, stating, “I fundamentally believe in the role of oil and gas for a long, long time to come.”

Sawan told the Wall Street Journal that he “doesn’t believe renewable and low-carbon energy projects should be subsidized by Shell’s fossil fuel profits.”

I recently wrote about an Arizona Public Service rate hike.  I have now learned that the other Arizona utility, Salt River Project, has been forced to double the rate hike it revealed last fall to pay for natural gas, solar and battery power to shore up supplies in 2024.

We didn’t elect Antonio Guterres either, but as the United Nations Secretary-General, we fund his salary along with taxpayers of other nations.  Last week, Guterres delivered another fear-mongering speech about the climate crisis.

Even though we were told the Arctic was going to be ice-free by 2018, Guterres asserted that “human activity is driving our planet’s temperature to dangerous heights,” while stating that “melting glaciers are the canary in the coal mine.”

When you wonder who’s running the White House, these are but a few who hold positions of consequence in our lives.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.