In his first two weeks in office, President Biden stacked up 29 Executive Orders. Most notably, he has cancelled the Keystone XL Pipeline permit and halted any new oil and gas leases on federal lands.
Without a significant decrease in demand for oil and natural gas – which we know won’t happen overnight – the U.S. will resume importing energy from overseas sources where we cannot control environmental regulation and where dependency on foreign oil endangers our national security.
Our fragile economic recovery and already high unemployment rates cannot handle the strain of these Executive Orders. Arkansas alone will lose over $3.5 million in revenue from oil and gas leasing on federal lands that would have otherwise been used to protect and conserve our state through the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
A study by American Petroleum Institute found that the U.S. will lose a million jobs by 2022 and $700 billion in GDP by 2030. President Biden has no plan to replace these lost jobs with those in clean energy any time soon.
Instead, the free market should be allowed to use American innovation and ingenuity to continue improving clean energy sources and create clean energy jobs gradually. Rules and regulation will not help the environment or a suffering American workforce. It will only fulfill promises to the radical left who are out of touch with real American families.
