The candidates on natural gas, climate change and energy
Which presidential candidate do you support? Do you know how your candidate feels about natural gas, climate change and energy? This column summarizes each candidate’s position on these issues. A more complete discussion can be found at www.ballotpedia.org.
Last week, I focused on the Democratic candidates. This week, I will take a look at the Republican candidates.
On the Republican side, Dr. Ben Carson is very critical of the Environmental Protection Agency. In July 2015 he posted on Facebook that he would radically change the way the EPA operates. Carson wrote, “My EPA would be much more like NASA and much less like the FBI. I believe we all understand that we want to leave our planet better than we found it. However, I believe the EPA should be a research and technology coordinator, not an armed police force. Find ways we can all pitch in and stop the regulatory mandates. Lead us, not leash us.”
Carson discussed climate change in his op-ed in the Reno Gazette-Journal on March 29. He wrote, “Whether we are experiencing global warming or a coming ice age, which was predicted in the 1970s, we as responsible human beings must be concerned about our surroundings and what we will pass on to future generations. However, to use climate change as an excuse not to develop our God-given resources makes little sense. Expanding our wealth of energy resources, as well as encouraging the development of new renewable energy sources, would provide an enormous economic lift with obvious benefits, but it also would bolster our role as a formidable player in the struggle for world leadership.”
Senator Ted Cruz is opposed to all energy subsidies, including for oil companies. He sponsored the American Energy Renaissance Act of 2014, which proposed lifting multiple regulations on energy producing industries. During his 2012 Senate campaign, Cruz proposed revoking the offshore drilling moratorium. Cruz is very much in favor of hydraulic fracturing and says, “We can and should vigilantly protect clean air and water while aggressively developing these new resources and new jobs.”
Regarding the climate change issue, Cruz said in a December NPR interview, “The scientific evidence doesn’t support global warming. For the last 18 years, the satellite data – we have satellites that monitor the atmosphere. The satellites that actually measure the temperature showed no significant warming whatsoever … Climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory for a big government politician who wants more power. Why? Because it is a theory that can never be disproven.”
Cruz has co-sponsored a number of bills in the Senate seeking to limit federal agencies from regulating carbon pollution and clean air standards.
Ohio Governor John Kasich embraces shale gas which is vital to his state’s economy. As a congressman, he supported the funding of renewable by the US Department of Energy. In June 2014, Kasich signed a bill to freeze Ohio’s standards for renewable energy. While many environmental groups were disappointed, groups such as Americans for Prosperity (AFP) praised Kasich, saying, “Governor Kasich has done the right thing by providing a temporary freeze to these standards so that the economic well-being of our working families and businesses can be factored in before moving forward.” The standards were first set in 2008, and the 2014 bill suspended those standards for two years in order to re-evaluate them.
“The Kasich Action Plan” was unveiled on Oct. 15. The package included provisions designed to boost energy from all sources — including oil and gas, nuclear, coal, alternatives and renewables, and emerging technologies — in order to become independent from overseas energy producers and ultimately source all the nation’s energy entirely from North America. The plan would increase access to oil and gas production on nonsensitive public lands with proper environmental protections; keep fracking regulations at the state level and eliminate efforts by the federal government to impose new ones; repeal regulations on energy production that are counterproductive, such as the Clean Power Plan; and encourage research in new technologies that increase efficiency and conservation while reducing costs and environmental impact such as battery technologies, fuel cells, the high-efficiency smart electricity grid and clean coal.
As governor, Kasich signed a bill that allowed drilling for oil and gas in Ohio state parks and on other state-owned land.
Senator Marco Rubio introduced a joint resolution on Sept. 17, 2015, disapproving of the Environmental Protection Agency’s expansion of federal authority over American lands and waterways. “Hardworking Americans have had enough of Washington bureaucrats telling them how to use their land. The EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers are irresponsible to go forward with this job-killing rule despite the serious concerns raised by farmers, ranchers, manufacturers and small business owners across the country,” said Rubio.
In an op-ed in the National Review on Sept. 1, Rubio said he would lift the ban on crude-oil exports, stop the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Clean Power Plan” and empower local and state governments to regulate energy production. During the September 2015 GOP debate, Marco Rubio said he would not support environmental regulations regarding climate change that hindered business development. “The bottom line is, I am not in favor of any policies that make America a harder place for people to live, or to work, or to raise their families,” Rubio said.
Rubio does “not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy. Our climate is always changing. And what they have chosen to do is take a handful of decades of research and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend that’s directly and almost solely attributable to man-made activities.”
According to the Tampa Bay Times, “As the leader of the Florida House in 2008, Rubio presided over a unanimous vote in favor of directing the state Department of Environmental Protection to develop ground rules for companies to limit their carbon emissions.”
Donald Trump said in a January 2014 interview on FOX News, climate change was “a hoax.” Two years earlier, Trump tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” In a January 2012 interview on FOX News, Trump called President Barack Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline “disgraceful.” Trump added, “Frankly, we don’t need Canada. We should just be able to drill our own oil. As long as it’s there we certainly should have approved it. It was jobs and cheaper oil. It’s just absolutely incredible. I guess President Obama took care of the environmentalists, but it is absolutely terrible. And it is not an environmental problem at all in any way, shape, or form.”
Trump wrote in his 2011 book, “Time to Get Tough,” that the Marcellus Shale was “one of the largest mother lodes of natural gas” and should be used to buy “more time to innovate and develop newer, more efficient, cleaner, and cheaper forms of energy.”
David Pearl is Vice President of Infinity Resource Group, Inc., a professional mineral rights consulting firm, specializing in the leasing and sale of mineral rights in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. He is also managing director of a natural gas fuel dispensing patent holding company and director of a natural gas fuel island development company. Your questions are welcomed by calling 412-535-9200 or by emailing IRGOilGas@gmail.com.