eBusiness Weekly
The New Hampshire primary elections, the first such elections held in the United States this year, were won by former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.
Trump and Republican challenger Nikki Haley questioned Biden’s record on developing the fossil fuel economy and continued to present voters with a choice: Increase oil and gas production or suffer the consequences as inflation rockets out of control and Social Security dries up.
But crude and natural gas production reached record numbers under the Biden administration, and ties between fossil fuel production and economic prosperity are less clear than the candidates make them seem, said energy policy experts.
“There’s this mistaken sense that we can drill or frack our way out of addressing energy needs,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Biden, who did not appear on the ballot but won the Democratic nomination with an organised write-in campaign, has called climate change an “existential threat” to humanity and made setting a path to 100 percent carbon-pollution-free electricity by 2035 a goal of his administration.
At multiple New Hampshire events, Trump repeated a long time Republican pledge to “drill, baby, drill” and promised to open up more oil and natural gas production, including by reviving construction on the Keystone XL Pipeline, a partially built crude oil pipeline blocked by President Biden in 2021.
“We’re gonna make so much money, we’re not gonna have to worry about your Social Security.”
On the campaign trail, Trump also touted the potential of exporting more natural gas to improve the economy and pay down the national debt. “We have a really wealthy nation. We have more liquid gold under our feet,” he told a crowd in Manchester. “We’re gonna make so much money, we’re not gonna have to worry about your Social Security.”
Haley has tried to differentiate herself from Trump by acknowledging that climate change is real, but made similar remarks at a meet-and-greet in Franklin earlier in the week.
“We’ll get the EPA out of the way. We’ll speed up our permitting, we’ll open up our pipelines, including the Keystone pipeline, we’ll export as much liquefied natural gas as we can…. That will get inflation down and that will build up our economy,” she told voters.
Under both Democratic and Republican leadership in the United States, the fossil fuel market has always been characterised by boom-bust cycles that exacerbate inflation, and increasing natural gas production and exports won’t change that, Cleetus said. “Fossil fuels are driving this problem (of inflation).
There’s no way to get out of this by continuing to expand fossil fuels—quite the opposite.”
Increasing oil and gas production will also lead to eventual costs in the form of public health and environmental concerns — costs that are not factored into calls to boost the US economy through fossil fuel production, Cleetus noted.
A rapid transition to clean energy is the best way to address both financial and public health challenges facing Americans, she said.
Nikki Hailey
Haley emphasised the idea that fossil fuel production would insulate U.S. energy prices from the global market. “We won’t be energy independent, we’ll be energy dominant,” she told voters at events in Keene and Peterborough.
“Energy independence is really a political slogan — it’s not a meaningful concept.”
According to Andrew Campbell, energy prices are determined less by the domestic energy policy and more by global factors such as geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
“The price will always be dependent on factors that are outside of U.S. control.” Campbell is the executive director of the Energy Institute at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Energy independence is really a political slogan—it’s not a meaningful concept,” he said.
“As a nation, we have tremendous clean energy resources,” said Cleetus. “And that’s the real opportunity to provide affordable, plentiful access to energy.”
Campaign Crashers
Haley’s campaign in particular garnered attention from climate activists in New Hampshire, who interrupted her 20 January event in Nashua.
“Why are you letting our homes be destroyed in climate disasters?” asked one activist.
“You’re destroying my generation’s future! You’re destroying my future!”
The activist was met with loud boos, to which Haley responded: “Don’t boo someone like that. Do you know why? Because my husband and other military men and women sacrifice every day for her to be able to do that.”
The audience applauded. Two other activists then stood up holding yellow banners that read “Haley: Climate Criminal.”
“Climate criminal, climate criminal,” they both chanted.
Near the end of the rally, Haley addressed the protests by emphasizing the need to “call out India and China” for their own emissions and partner with energy producers instead of “demonising” them.
Cleetus said disregard of the United States’ role in climate change is a systemic, rather than partisan, issue.
“It’s larger than a political point. Policymakers have to chart a different course,” she said.
“We’ve come out of COP28 in Dubai with an agreement to transition away from fossil fuels. The United States can be on the forefront of that and should be on the forefront of that.”
