The Answer on Fracking That Biden Needs to Give.

Joe Biden has really made a hash of his answers on fracking, and the thing is, it’s really easy to answer…on paper. Harder to do in 30 seconds in a debate. So, I hereby put forward what should be his and the Democratic Party’s policy on fracking….with space for Joe Biden to sign on.

I, Joseph Robinette Biden, do affirm that the following reflects my ideas for proceeding with respect to fracking operations:

First and foremost, the President cannot simply issue an order banning fracking in this country. Even if I wanted to, I could not do that. I’ve said I will try to prevent any new drilling leases on PUBLIC LANDS. We need to preserve those natural places for future generations, and we don’t need the oil and gas that might still be there. Right now, the President can’t even sign a blanket ban protecting all federal lands. Just this month, a federal court struck down one of our EPA rules, meant to regulate the methane gas that is being allowed to leak from many drilling operations. We have to address our legal authorities.

In 2004, Dick Cheney pushed through an addition to the Bush Energy Act — what’s become known as the Halliburton Loophole. So long as that’s in place, the federal government is really limited in what it can do to regulate fracking. That terrible rule has prevented EPA from issuing sensible regulations, and even Congress can’t legislate without first repealing the Halliburton Loophole. The damage that’s caused over the last 15 years will be with us for 100s or 1000s of years.

Then, we can bring science to bear. Science and common sense. Fracking can poison our water supplies, and the disposal of the toxic waste in old wells has been causing earthquakes which have damaged homes and road and other infrastructure in places like Oklahoma, Texas and Pennsylvania. Local farmers and other local residents shouldn’t have to be paying for the damage being caused by the industry. economists have a word for such collateral damage — Externalities. I believe the companies which have been poisoning our environment should be made to stop that, and made to bear the costs of the damage to the environment and the climate.

And, of course, all those methane leaks are actually making climate change worse. It’s happening faster than we predicted 20 and 30 years ago. We can’t ban fracking, but we should require the industry to make sure this is being done in ways which don’t poison local communities and which don’t accelerate the climate crisis. That’s what I’ll try to

We haven’t banned coal, but it’s become a market loser, because natural gas and now renewable energy is cheaper. That’s something we should be happy about, but we have to provide support for communities that are losing the mining jobs. To be honest, all that mining hasn’t been great for those communities. The last 20 to 30 years, coal companies have been blowing the tops of mountains in West Virginia, destroying the state’s greatest resources — its natural beauty and its people, who are suffering illnesses of every kind because of it.

We can’t ban coal or oil, or even fracking, but we should be sure they’re done as clearly as possible — and our future investments must be in 21st Century energy sources, like solar and wind, and not 19th Century energy. So we regulate, and we end subsidies for oil and gas. They’re not going to go away in a hurry. We’ve invested in massive infrastructure which will continue to subsidize the delivery costs of oil and gas, but we need to stop subsidizing exploration. Instead we invest in new infrastructure to support clean renewable energy.

We need to stop adding to the greenhouse gases, and we need to start pulling them out of the atmosphere, with better agricultural practices and planting trees. President Trump has adopted environmentalists’ idea of planting a trillion trees. It’s a great idea, but so far it’s just words. Meanwhile our forests are burning down.

We won’t have to ban fracking because at some point it will stop being economical to drill that way for new oil and gas. Energy producers and customers will be choosing cheaper clean renewables. That’s a good thing. Our policy should be aimed at making that happen on a timeline that is short enough that we can head off the worst of climate change, to avoid crossing the tipping points that will lead to far worse cataclysms than we’ve seen.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

Joseph R. Biden