Fracking

While the House of Representatives has understandably been quiet during the government shutdown, not everyone has been idle. While most members of Congress were home in their districts, Representative Troy Balderson, an Ohio Republican, quietly introduced a short, potentially consequential piece of energy legislation called “The Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security Act.” “We the People” will celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday next Independence Day. And truth be told, we are crossing this milestone birthday showing our age. We are politically bipolar. We are in debt. Our infrastructure is crumbling and our schools are a mess. We are in need of several new leases on life.

I, for one, never thought he would do it. I never thought Joe Manchin, who was elected in West Virginia after running an ad in which he literally shot the 2009 cap-and-trade bill, would sign on to Joe Biden's Build Back Better climate agenda. Yet sign on he has. Last night, Manchin announced that after over a year of logjamming Biden's spending plans, he'd struck a deal. The legislation he agreed to weighs in at a ballpark of $700 billion, a sharp climbdown from the $6 trillion Democrats had initially asked for. But it's still a lot of money, and even more importantly, it's a major psychological boost for the left. Now, barring some let-the-world-burn chaos from goth kid Kyrsten Sinema or revolt from House Dems, Build Back Better will be signed into law.

Boris Johnson is considering doing something that should be a duty for every leader. In the wake of sanctions poised to disrupt the 8 percent of domestic oil and 18 percent of diesel the UK imports from Russia, Johnson is reportedly toying with the idea of putting his country first and on the road to self-sufficiency by lifting the UK’s moratorium on fracking. The British government banned hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” in 2019. Fracking is a method of extracting oil and natural gas by drilling deep underground and fracturing shale rock with a fluid mixture (99 percent water and sand) that allows fossil fuels to flow out, be captured, processed and used to myriad ends (including gasoline).

One issue more than any other will dominate airtime and influence policy in 2022: energy. Americans are seeing the highest prices at the pump in seven years. Since Biden took office, average gas prices are up by more than $1 a gallon. In November, gas prices in Mono County, California hit more than $6 per gallon, forcing some residents to drive to Nevada (where gas taxes are lower) to buy fuel. The price of natural gas in the US is at its highest in seven years, and up more than 180 percent in the last year alone. In Europe, the situation is even worse. Europe’s gas reserves are at record lows. In Germany, which already had the EU’s highest energy prices, bills are up 30 percent in a year.

First, let me pay brief homage to Kristen Welker, moderator of Thursday night’s debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. A White House correspondent for NBC, she is pretty clearly not an enthusiast for President Trump. But unlike the wretched Chris Wallace, she did not make the debate a two-versus-one shouting match against the President. And unlike Steve Scully, who was scheduled to moderate the canceled second debate, she did not covertly consult with one of the President’s enemies and then lie about it when exposed.

Sigmund Freud famously noted that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. In the case of fracking, even Freud would have acknowledged that fracking is about so much more than just fracking. That is why the issue is so important to voters beyond those in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas where so much oil and natural gas is produced. That is also why Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have tried to walk back their positions on fracking from the Democratic primary, when they said they’d ban fracking and cease the use of carbon-based energy sources, as well as push for the budget-busting and progressive utopian Green New Deal. Of course, it’s about jobs.

Dublin, Ohio Since the presidential election of 1944 when Ohio went with loser Thomas Dewey over winner Franklin Roosevelt, Ohio voters have given majority support to every presidential winner except one. The sole ‘error’ occurred in 1960 when Ohio went with loser Richard Nixon over winner John F. Kennedy. That means Ohio has gone 14 straight elections, or 60 straight years, picking the winner. No other state carries such a distinguished record. With Joe Biden barely campaigning in Ohio and Donald Trump covering the state — signs point to Trump again winning Ohio in 2020, albeit with a smaller margin. Nevertheless, will Ohio be wrong this year? Don’t bet on it. For years, Ohio’s slogan was ‘The Heart of It All!

This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. What could be more emblematic of the American Dream than fracking, the miracle technology that has created thousands of real jobs, lowered the cost of living, generated wealth and prosperity, boosted competitiveness and helped make the United States not just energy independent, but a net exporter of natural gas and petroleum products for the first time in decades? And what could be more characteristic of the elitist, small-minded, anti-market, anti-blue-collar, anti-growth, green-obsessed liberal-left than that the Democratic party is hell-bent on banning it?