Biden's climate politics undermining U.S. energy independence: Charles Payne
Fox Business anchor and host of 'Making Money' Charles Payne joins 'Hannity' to sound off.
As President Biden reportedly seeks a weakening in oil sanctions on Communist autocrat Nicolas Maduro's Venezuela while opposing fossil fuel speculation at home, Fox Business host Charles Payne warned the U.S. could follow in Europe's footsteps as they "genuflect" to the green revolution at the expense of their own citizens.
Payne noted how European nations shuttered their own energy production capabilities over the past decades, before realizing most recently they are in the midst of an energy crisis with the dual setbacks of their major proprietor Russia no longer being a viable source and their left-leaning governments' collective green energy policies causing self-inflicted damage to their grids.
"I used on ['Making Money'] a schematic from 1974 when Germany predicted overwhelmingly all their power will be coming from nuclear power plants," he said. "Of course, they've scratched that. They wouldn't build liquefied natural gas facilities. Now they're trying to expedite them, but takes years to build them."
"The suicide that we are seeing by Western nations genuflecting to this green utopia that they think is right around the corner – but instead they're killing; they're crushing the citizens."
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An oil pumpjack operates in the drive-thru area of a McDonald's in Bradford, Pennsylvania, near the New York border. (Reuters)
Under Biden, oil spiked from a Trump-era low of under $2 per gallon in many places to over $5 during the summer. While the price settled somewhat to around $4 as of late, Payne said the proverbial wound is self-inflicted.
"It's going to get a whole lot worse," he said. "This conversation we're having right now, we're going to have another conversation similar to this a year from now and two years from now, three years from now, because the lack of investment in fossil fuels in this country is going to be cataclysmic to us. It is going to crush us."
Biden and his acolytes seem to believe the U.S. can "flip a switch" into solar or wind power instead of using oil, he said.
"Everyone involved must know it's wrong," he said, as he and host Sean Hannity pointed to the fact the U.S. has a wealth of oil production capability, chiefly in Alaska, Texas, and Pennsylvania, while the Keystone State as well as New York are also rich in natural gas but currently subject state parkland moratoriums in the former and a blanket ban in the latter.
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Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuela's president, was one of the first to congratulate Gustavo Petro on his win. Photographer: Gaby Oraa/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Gaby Oraa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The first commercial oil well in the United States was drilled in Titusville, Pa. in 1859, and Venango County continues to produce oil to this day. In that area, however, the average price per gallon sat at $3.99 on Wednesday.
Payne went on to note reportage on a potential change in relations with Venezuela as the U.S. seeks other outlets for oil acquisition.
The administration is preparing to reduce sanctions on the Maduro regime in Caracas to allow Chevron Corporation to resume its operations there, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The move would be made in exchange for the strongman leader to return to the negotiating table with his political opposition. An NSC spokesperson told the paper that "constructive steps" from Maduro would have to be made in order to execute any changes.
Fuel prices at a Chevron gas station in Menlo Park, California, US, on Thursday, June 9, 2022. Stratospheric Fuel prices have broken records for at least seven days with the average cost of fuel per gallon hitting $4.96 as of June 8, according to the American Automobile Association. (Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
"Here's the crazy thing," Payne said. "You talk about the poor environmental… track record in Venezuela. That's also some really heavy crude [oil]. It takes a lot of energy to refine it. And it's just so stupid, so dumb."
"It just it doesn't make sense on any level from a humanitarian point of view, from an economic point of view, from a geopolitical point of view. For the defense of safety of Americans and the world in the Western Hemisphere, it doesn't check any of those boxes. In fact, it makes every single one of them absolutely worse," he said of such a plan.
Earlier this year, Maryland Republican Gov. Lawrence Hogan Jr. met with Venezuelan-American business leaders and urged Biden not to relax such sanctions:
"I hope my presence here today sends a clear message that the people of Maryland stand with the people of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and everyone who yearns for freedom and democracy across Latin America," Hogan emphasized in his statement to Fox News at the time.
Fox News' Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.