OPINION:
Recently, a handful of nominal Republicans were included in a story about what the new Republican House majority should do. These Republicans talked about supporting renewables and planting trees, and engaging in other mostly pointless but expensive activities.
Here’s what the Republicans should really do with their new House majority.
First, and most importantly, Republicans should draw sharp contrasts between themselves and those who would make energy more expensive through whatever mechanisms. Republicans should be and will always be the party of affordable and reliable energy. It’s just that simple.
As the problems engulfing Europe demonstrate, modern life is made possible by coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power. Forty years ago, coal, oil and natural gas provided about 80% of the primary energy on this planet. In 2021, after 40 years of taxpayers and businesses spending trillions of dollars on developing and deploying alternative energy sources, oil, coal and natural gas (in that order) provided about … 80% of the primary energy in the world.
The Republicans need to be clear-eyed that most of the problem we face with respect to high energy prices is because of systemic underinvestment in oil and natural gas over the last decade. That underinvestment results from the relentless propaganda about the remote possibility of having an energy system that produces no net carbon dioxide emissions within the next generation.
House Republicans should debate and vote on net-zero goals and their costs. If net zero and the attendant economic effects are going to be positive, everyone should be eager to vote for them.
Republicans should be clear that pursuing an energy transition will have real costs. The McKinsey and Co. consulting firm has estimated that it will cost almost $300 trillion in the next 80 years to achieve net zero.
In addition, if the transition will expand the economy, then it should be paid for by willing investors rather than captive taxpayers and ratepayers.
Republicans also need to examine the role of environment, social and governance (ESG) and the weaponization of federal financial regulators. They should bring to light the potential conflicts of interest with respect to rating agencies, as well as the many instances in which those who impose ESG considerations on investments — like many who support the energy “transition” — are themselves in bed with genocidal, enslaving communist China.
The new majority needs to address the California waiver, which would transfer control over decisions about what cars get made and purchased from consumers to bureaucrats in Sacramento. They need to revisit the tax credits made permanent in the Inflation Reduction Act, and they need to defend the domestic content provisions of those tax credits against the inevitable attacks from automakers and others.
As an adjunct to their principal efforts, Republicans should engage in smart and directed oversight of all of Team Biden’s efforts in the energy and environmental space.
Finally, Republicans should make it clear that markets — not bureaucrats and not political stooges — produce the most efficient solutions, which in the energy space also means the solutions that have the fewest negative externalities, including pollution.
The very last thing the Republicans should do is accept their adversaries’ framing of the issues. The new majority is there to do something about inflation, lawlessness, border security, and to generally check the Biden administration. They are also there to do something about energy prices. No one gave the Republicans the majority in the House so they could plant trees or ship taxpayer cash to wealthy investors in alternative energy or just generally act like Team Biden except at a lower level of intensity.
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