Joe Biden said that he would end fracking, during an exchange with a New Hampshire voter on Friday.
Voter: “But like, what about, say, stopping fracking?”
Biden: “Yes.”
Voter: “And stopping pipeline infrastructure?”
Biden: “Yes.”
If elected, Biden’s fracking ban will devastate the economies of several battleground states, as noted by Steve Moore in the Wall Street Journal:
Curtailing U.S. oil and gas production would be economically disastrous. At least $1 trillion of U.S. economic output is related to the shale revolution, and more than 1.5 million Americans are employed by the industry. A PricewaterhouseCoopers study for the American Petroleum Institute found that at least four million American jobs are tied to the shale oil and gas revolution in areas like auto production, construction, petroleum engineering, pipe fitting, service stations, steel production and trucking.
Democrats’ quest to eliminate these jobs would hurt them in the swing states they’ll need to win to unseat President Trump. Ohio and Michigan have a combined total of more than 400,000 workers in the shale industry. Pennsylvania has another 320,000. Colorado and Florida each have more than 200,000 workers in oil and gas.
Pittsburgh has become a global energy hub, and whole towns in Ohio and Pennsylvania that were once left for dead have been revitalized thanks to shale gas and related industries.
Then consider Texas. Liberals have long wanted to turn the Lone Star State blue, or at least purple. But nearly two million Texans are employed in oil and gas and related industries. Many hard-hat workers and truckers employed in the oil-rich Permian Basin earn more than $100,000 a year with overtime. How do you win in and around Houston, Dallas and Midland with a platform that opposes oil and gas?
Biden has shown a consistent hostility to energy industry workers. In December he suggested if coal miners lose their job due to his policies they should learn to code.
Biden has also said “we should put them in jail” when talking about fossil fuel executives.
Biden also endorsed a carbon tax on the American people, which will force households to pay much higher gasoline, heating, and cooling bills.