COGCC’s Green New Deal policies will destroy Colo. jobs
Time and time again, Coloradans have been able to fend off attacks on our oil and gas industry.
In 2014, environmentalists pushed a ballot measure seeking a 2,000- foot setback for oil and gas drilling and removal of local control. Voters rejected it.
In 2016, environmentalists tried to collect enough signatures for a 2,500- foot setback ballot initiative. That turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of empty petition boxes.
In 2018, environmentalists again tried to push another de facto energy ban. Colorado voters said no.
You’d think by now, these environmentalists would have learned their lesson– that Coloradans do not, and will never, support job- killing initiatives against the oil and gas industry.
Coloradans know that our state is thriving because of local control over our oil and gas industry. But now in 2020, we’re faced with more heavy- handed regulations, and they sound like they’re right out of the pages of the Green New Deal. Gov. Jared Polis knows he can’t get a majority of Coloradans to agree to a ballot initiative, so he stacked a bureaucratic oil and gas commission with his cronies and ordered them to do his dirty work.
Polis’ reconstituted Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission ( COGCC) is currently considering radical regulations that would kill our state’s oil and gas industry and put hundreds of thousands of Coloradans out of work.
As a part of the progressive overhaul of the oil and gas industry, COGCC has recommended a slew of concerning policy proposals, including a minimum 2,000- foot setback for oil and gas drilling in residential areas. Four of the five COGCC members have voiced support for this extended setback, which is four times the current standard for urban areas.
This idea comes straight from radical environmentalist groups that have pushed these types of industry- killing regulations in Denver and Boulder for years, using baseless claims to back up their reasoning.
But the science is simply not on their side.
Tami McMullin, a toxicology consultant formerly with the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, told The Denver Post she and her team of researchers rigorously reviewed air samples collected across Colorado for a 2019 state health report. Her team concluded that the concentrations of toxins in Colorado’s air samples were far below levels to be considered harmful.
“Based upon the weight of evidence and the extensive body of monitoring data, there is no causal data demonstrating the need for further risk- reduction measures beyond those which are already being applied,” McMullin told The Denver Post. “Specifically, there is no credible evidence supporting the need for greater setback distances in order to protect public health.”
Did you hear that? “There is no credible evidence supporting the need for greater setback distances in order to protect public health.”
The debate over this proposal would be over if it was simply about public health. But that’s not what members of the governor’s handpicked commission care about. Instead, COGCC is far more interested in appeasing Front Range environmentalists by issuing job- killing regulations that would harm our economy.
These tactics aren’t new. Just months after progressives in Washington announced their Green New Deal, Gov. Polis pledged to make Colorado 100% reliant on renewable energy by 2040. This plan was simply a laundry list of liberal ideas, far outside of mainstream thought.
Gov. Polis is effectively using COGCC to push through a
Green New Deal of his own, and this new regulation would be his first step in destroying jobs and implementing a radical regulatory agenda.
But despite Gov. Polis and his progressive allies’ best efforts, Colorado is still the seventhlargest producer of natural gas and the fifth- largest producer of oil in the U. S. My home county of Weld, where local officials give the industry freedom to innovate and thrive, is responsible for 88% of Colorado’s oil and 40% of the state’s gas production.
Colorado’s oil and gas industry supports an estimated 232,900 jobs that keep the lights on for families across my district and the state. These are good- paying jobs, resulting in $ 23.1 billion in wages. The industry also contributes approximately $ 1 billion in tax revenue annually, including $ 600 million that goes to
K- 12 public education.
But it’s not just about jobs. Curtailing Colorado’s ability to produce clean oil and gas will have a decidedly negative environmental impact. Industry- led innovations have put Colorado on the precipice of extracting the cleanest natural gas molecules in the world. In fact, according to the Colorado Oil and Gas Association ( COGA), Colorado’s oil and natural gas industry saw a near 50% reduction in emissions between 2011 and
2017. This didn’t happen by accident. Local governments worked with energy companies, allowing them to innovate and create new technologies to reduce emissions and improve efficiency.
It goes without saying, COGCC’s regulations will hurt hardworking Coloradans in rural counties. Unfortunately, these rural residents are the very individuals Gov. Polis and his commission are least likely to take into account when making decisions that will drastically impact rural economies.
We don’t need the Green New Deal in Colorado. We can’t let progressives wreck our economy with these radical policies. That’s why we need to keep these decisions at the local level, not in Denver or Washington.