I&I Editorial

The 2020 Democratic presidential field is in near unanimous agreement that fracking has to be banned or at least regulated to death over time. It plays well to the party’s base, especially its green fringe. It’s also an endorsement of recession.

Joe Biden, currently atop the Democratic primary polls, recently said he would “love to” ban fracking “right now,” and would also “love to make sure we can’t use any oil or gas, period,” reports Common Dreams, a website that caters to leftist and socialist devotees.

But the decelerated Delawarean’s plan is to “transition away from” fracking rather than killing it all at once. So put him in the “slow death” category among Democrat candidates. Meanwhile, in the summary execution category we find Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Warren even said that on the day she is inaugurated, “I will ban fracking — everywhere.”

The Democrats are shockingly insensitive to the harm their energy plans would inflict on Americans. Former Vice President “‘We’re all dead‘ if we don’t stop using fossil fuels” Biden told the crowd at a coal town earlier this week that miners can just learn code after Democrats kill their jobs. The callousness and arrogance are appalling.

But it’s not only coal miners who will suffer under the Democrats’ energy agenda. The entire world would be hurt.

“If the U.S. imposed a fracking ban, the supply disruption would trigger the biggest oil and natural gas price spikes in history — almost certainly by more than 200% — which would, in turn, tip the world into recession,” Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Mark Mills wrote last month in a policy brief.

In fact, the Democrats don’t have to do much more than run their mouths to cause economic troubles.

“Even the expectation that a ban could be enacted would destabilize markets,” Mills writes.

While a fracking ban would eliminate only 7% of global oil and 17% of the gas supply, he says, “in a global commodity market … changes of even 1%–2% in the supply/demand balance trigger huge price swings.”

Mills reminds us that the 1973 Arab oil embargo, which removed only 7% of oil from the global market yet caused prices to surge 400%, set off a global recession. Six years later, “the Iranian revolution took a comparable 5% of oil off world markets and prices spiked over 200%, sparking another global recession.”

A fracking ban appeals not only to the eco-radicals of the left, it would satisfy the Democrats’ “recession lust.” They, as well as their supporters touched by Trump Derangement Syndrome, need a downturn to “get rid of Trump.”

“We see Democratic leaders and the ‘unbiased’ media openly rooting for a recession,” economist Stephen Moore wrote in late August in the Washington Times. “The drumbeat for an economic contraction has been nonstop for the last two weeks.”

Just days before Moore’s op-ed was published, Biden said “I never wish for a recession. Period.” But we know that inside, Biden and his Democratic family, as well as the party operatives in the media, would welcome a recession because it would give them the “serious crisis” they so desperately want so that they can expand their raw political power by taking the White House and possibly the Senate.

While it doesn’t look like they’ll get the 2020 recession they’re hoping for, the Democrats would surely get one if they are ever successful in their furious efforts to outlaw fracking. That the downturn came on their watch wouldn’t bother them at all. They’d blame it on Trump, and the media would go along for the ride, publishing, broadcasting, and streaming a noxious river of news stories, “analyses,” op-eds, and editorials assuring the country that the previous administration’s tax-cutting/deregulatory agenda wrecked the economy.

At the same time, both groups would have their eyes on the next agenda item that would deepen the recession — and use it to further consolidate their political and cultural dominion over a nation that was intended to be the model of liberty for the entire world.

— Written by J. Frank Bullitt

Editor’s note: The original version incorrectly identified Pete Buttigieg as mayor of Indianapolis.

Note to Readers: Issues & Insights is a new site launched by the seasoned journalists behind the legendary IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to use our decades of experience to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day.

We’re doing this on a voluntary basis because we think our approach to commentary is sorely lacking both in today’s mainstream media and on the internet. If you like what you see, feel free to click the Tip Jar over on the right sidebar. And be sure to tell your friends!

We Could Use Your Help Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists from the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to use our decades of experience to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day. We’re doing this on a voluntary basis because we think our approach to commentary is sorely lacking both in today’s mainstream media and on the internet. You can help us keep our mission going. If you like what you see, feel free to visit our Donations Page by clicking here. And be sure to tell your friends! You can also subscribe to I&I: It's free!

Share this...





Reddit

Linkedin

email