A ban of fossil fuel extraction on federal land would hurt
Agrowing number of Democratic presidential candidates want to lock away the vast energy deposits sitting beneath federally owned lands and waters. Once a chant from radical environmental groups, “keep it in the ground” has become a mainstream campaign promise by presidential contenders embracing a growing list of extreme policy positions. Nearly half the Democratic presidential candidates now support some type of federal ban on fossil fuel production.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke have pledged to halt all new fossil fuel leasing on their first day in the White House. Former Vice President Joe Biden has promised to stop issuing permits for new oil and gas drilling on federal lands and waters. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders
and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, along with Sen. Warren, have co-sponsored the Keep It in the Ground Act, which would enact a complete fossil fuel ban on public lands and in federal waters. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro has said he also supports the ideas in the bill.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee introduced a plan that would not only permanently ban all new leases of coal, oil and gas on federal lands but would also “restrict” existing drilling and mining leases by increasing the royalty rates companies pay to the government. Gov. Inslee’s plan would also stop fossil fuel exports by reinstating the crude oil export ban that President Barack Obama and Congress revoked in 2015. He would even set similar restrictions on the export of coal and liquified natural gas.
Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard authored legislation that would prohibit new federal permits for fossil fuel projects and exploration and ban the export of crude oil and natural gas. Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey have cosponsored legislation that would codify and expand the Obama administration’s restrictions on exploration and production in the Arctic. And that’s not even counting the many Democratic presidential candidates who have embraced the impractical Green New Deal that is projected to cost taxpayers upward of $93 trillion.
These new radical environmental policies being proposed by Democratic presidential candidates puts at risk the roughly 10.3 million workers nationally whose jobs are directly or indirectly supported by oil and gas production. About 232,900 of these are in Colorado. In addition to potential local job losses, banning the production of fossil fuel on public lands would also deprive state and local governments of vital revenue streams from royalties used to fund schools, parks and social assistance programs. This would be particularly detrimental to states such as Colorado that receive at least seven different public revenue streams from oil and natural gas development, such as income, property and severance taxes. This amounted to almost a billion dollars for Colorado in 2017 alone.
Banning fossil fuel production on federal lands would not only have a devastating effect on jobs in states such as Colorado. Higher energy prices, resulting from less supply, would raise prices not just on utility bills but on everything that is transported or manufactured. The cascading effect of higher prices would hurt working families the most.
What do we get from these radical proposals that would cripple our economy? The U.S. is already the biggest net reducer of carbon emissions in the world since 2000, according to the 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The EPA estimates our total output is just 15 percent of the world total. Rather than sacrifice our own prosperity while others stand by, let’s do something to make polluting countries such as China and India contribute. China especially only gives lip service.
Carbon emissions are a global issue. Any potential and future benefit to the world from eliminating fossil fuel production on federal lands is far outweighed by the serious and certain damage to our economy and to the working people of America that we would suffer here and now.
Presidential candidates who cannot perform a simple costbenefit analysis should not be
taken seriously.