One reason Biden is in trouble is right here, circled on the map.
They are flaring off natural gas. It is a by-product of oil drilling and oil companies can't get the natural gas to market.
Democrats generally support "the climate agenda" when it is presented generally. But in everyday practice, most Americans are more concerned about grocery and gasoline prices than they are about climate. Climate is a theory and a mystery, and it is the future. Prices today are money out of today's billfold. Democratic climate activists oppose natural gas pipelines, chilling facilities, and natural gas terminal port developments because they recognize that these investments make natural gas more marketable. Inexpensive natural gas makes greener alternatives less attractive. Investments in natural gas pipelines have 40-year lives, so if we build out natural gas distribution, and people continue to build homes with natural gas furnaces and ovens, then the U.S. will delay making the switch toward greener energy. That is why some blue jurisdictions have placed bans on new natural gas hookups. Popular demonstrations and lawsuits by environmentalists oppose new pipelines.
Several times a week people ask me, "How is it possible so many people are planning to vote for Trump. Why is this election even close?"
President Biden was elected as a centrist. Democratic primary voters made that choice in the spring of 2020 when they chose Biden, not Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. He adjusted to try to keep the progressive left from defecting, so he is governing as an environmental progressive.
The net result is that America flares off natural gas at the pump-head. It is the result of policy.
Biden's policy choices send a message to working class Americans everywhere. They attribute high gasoline prices to Biden. People in energy-producing areas of Pennsylvania, New Mexico and upstate New York, get the message that Biden cares more about the climate policies of college-educated liberal elitists than he does about their jobs. Pennsylvania and New Mexico are battleground states. The loss of House seats in New York cost Democrats a House majority.
High gasoline prices are practical body language. Natural gas flares are practical body language. No speech about Bidenomics or "balance" or "transitional fuel" overcomes what people see and fee.
Democrats might be stronger politically if they remembered the emotion of John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck described government policy of destroying food to meet a long term goal. People saw the waste. They saw something they wanted withheld from them. They didn't appreciate the long term goal.
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? . . . . There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. . . . [A]nd in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
For working Americans a fill-up of gasoline -- 21 gallons at $4.85 a gallon, the current price in Medford -- is a hundred dollars, which is over four hours, and perhaps more, of work for the median-income employee. Prosperous, well-educated Democrats who perceive climate as a pressing emergency see the wisdom of making the hard choice to reject natural gas. Some of them are removing their gas ovens and stovetops. They wonder how it is possible that so many voters would choose a crazy, dishonest, would-be dictator who denies climate change and loves oil companies.
President Biden's policies have Americans flaring off natural gas. It seems so wrong. In the eyes of working people there is a failure and the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy.
"Good" may be the enemy of the "good enough" and the possible.
16 comments:
The U.S. only has two competitive political parties, but to keep them competitive, the leaders have to form coalitions with disparate groups. Pundits say Biden has a problem with young people. That’s no surprise. They tend to place a higher value on ideals than on realpolitik, and our failure to address the ever-increasing catastrophe of climate change falls far short of any reasonable and prudent person’s interests. So does giving military aid to a country that’s slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians, and ditto for increasing our out-of-control national debt.
I don’t blame the youth for feeling disaffected. They’re the ones who get to inherit all the disasters we’re leaving behind. Biden’s only redeeming feature is that he’s far less repulsive than the platform of fear, anger and hatred offered by Trump.
The whole climate change issue is tough for democrats. Do you take the marshmallow in front of you or do you delay for two? I’m not sure which is the most reasonable decision.
I think man will overcome climate issues, but I am less confident that mankind won’t destroy itself as technology makes that more and more possible. In the meantime we will find out if Americans will put an end to democracy in favor of tribalism. After all men kill each other over artificial lines drawn on a map. Just look at Korea.
The Citizens of the U.S. have been spoiled rotten over decades of cheap gasoline, in relation to our neighbors to the North and in the U.K and Europe. I well remember the dismay and anger spreading across the Country when OPEC embargoed us and gas prices went soaring towards $1 a gallon and magically leveled off after reaching that benchmark . While in Canada and across the Atlantic, prices at the pump were and still are several times the prices here, and gasoline is sold by the Litre, not the gallon, generally out into more fuel efficient vehicles, not behemoth SUVs and Pickups. And the Public blames the President,as if he has a magic wand he could wave and pump prices would drop to pre 1973 levels, and Climate denying 'Conservatives" promise $2 gasoline, which will never be seen again as long as Big Oil receives Billions in tax payer subsidies while reaping obscene levels of profit, while fighting every effort to do do something to help mitigate the looming Global Warming. My Grandchildren, born in this Century will curse my Generation, we Boomers, for our inaction.
Democracy is government by the will of the people. Elites might want to elect another people, but that’s not actually how it works.
A recent survey demonstrated that the economy is a major concern of the people, well above anything to do with the climate or foreign policy, and this is even true of young people.
In six months, we will find out what the people want, and perhaps that will be followed by four years of bitching and moaning by the elites.
Biden's policies are good for most Americans of any age.
The republicans' policy includes only hate and dishonesty.
If only...
Jimmy Carter had the vision to curtail the amount of gasoline use in the gas guzzlers of the time. Conservation was the watchword of the day. I remember trying to drive 50 MPH in a government issued and plated truck in Eastern Oregon where the speed was the basic rule. Meaning what ever was safe for the conditions. At that time there were few vehicles to encounter on the roads and highways. As a result it it turned a two hour drive into three or four hours point to point. Depending on where you lived in the country there was scarcity or abundance. The situation was a crazy quilt of supply, with urban areas feeling the pain most of all. The bitter policy of gas rationing was the result.
America is a car culture now as then. With the exception of New York City, mass transit does not provide the point to point travel we've come to expect. If memory serves, the GDP actually declined in the Carter Years. Reagan turned the mood of America into a resounding defeat for Carter's policies.
The idea that we could drill our way out of the shortage became to policy, even as the fossil fuel producers were alerted to the increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The science behind these facts became deliberately distorted and muddled in the public's perception of the problem as it has with the firehose of falsehood told by the former president.
Bottom line, no one likes to be put on a diet and change their habits. Biden has chosen a middle path and everyone feels some pain with his policies. The former president is embracing some of Reagan's appeal. We will see the results soon at the polls in November.
Fascism feeds on despair and uncertainty. Fascism uses racism and class envy to galvanize raw political power. If spanky is elected expect terrible episodes of racial and ethnic violence and incarceration in special camps. The US is on the edge of long period of evil and darkness, broght on by the some of the evil fundamental characteristics of human nature, especially in large groups.
What happened in 1930s Germany can certainly happen here with likely similar consequences. As a child of victims of fascism, I am deeply dismayed by current events.
Dunno where you came up with that pic but that’s more than likely Edmonton. I’ve been through North Dakota pretty extensively and have never seen a flare. Fracking uses the recirculation of chemically mixed water and the gas that is extracted is used to run generators; some of which unbelievably run on hydrogen. Also there are no oil fields per se compared to California or Texas. They move them around and you’ll see small setups with lots of mobile tanks in the middle of nowhere and if there was a flare there’s no way you'd see it from a satellite hovering the flat earth.
Or it could be the fires of northern Alberta from last year.
As Tom said, what happened to the Weimar Republic can certainly happen to ours. Trump and the Republican hate machine are well-funded by the elites, such as Don Ahern and Frank Bigelow. But hopefully the American people will have better sense than to give the psychopath a second term and leave the elites bitching and moaning.
The lights are gas flares in the area around Williston, North Dakota.
The lights are gas flares in the area around Williston, North Dakota.
The CO2 emissions count less against global warming because the energy is wasted, and no one benefits.
I doubt it; that’s heat from fire. No way flares are brighter than Minneapolis, Vegas or Phoenix and cover more ground than Chicago. Prairies are ultra dark and desolate at night.
That’s an image from 2013. A lot has changed in the fracking industry especially since ‘20 when Trump tanked the economy, the barrel price and production.
Regardless of what Mr. Cambodia thinks, greenhouse gases are an existential threat to our offspring and methane is one of the worst.
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