Sens. Sullivan, Cramer, Lummis Unveil “American Energy, Jobs & Climate Plan”
Senators put forward an alternative vision to Biden-Kerry climate proposals
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senators Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) held a press conference today in the Capitol to announce the American Energy, Jobs & Climate Plan, an innovative clean energy and climate strategy with the potential to reduce global emissions by up to 40 percent from today’s levels by 2050 and create thousands of jobs for hard-working Americans. Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas), John Kennedy (R-La.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) also attended the press conference.
The senators argued that the flawed climate and energy policies being implemented by the Biden administration are killing good-paying American energy jobs and driving up the costs that hard-working families are paying at the gas pump and to heat their homes. The senators see the new plan as an energy strategy that offers the American people realistic, achievable solutions to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, unlike the Democrats’ unaffordable and unrealistic proposals, such as the Green New Deal.
The framework is built around five key policy priorities:
- Expand current power and energy production base to leverage our world-class energy resources to empower American workers, enhance U.S. economic and national security, and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
- Support infrastructure, resources, investments and incentives to build out the American renewable energy manufacturing and electricity sector.
- Leverage America’s energy and natural resource abundance and independence to create millions of good-paying jobs in the energy and manufacturing sectors and empower the American worker.
- Enact permitting reform to ensure all energy, mineral, and infrastructure projects can be built in an efficient, timely, and certain manner.
- Take advantage of America’s abundant energy and natural resources and rebuild the American supply chain to continue to gain comparative advantages against China, Russia, Iran and other foreign adversaries while lowering global greenhouse gas emissions.
Below is a full transcript of Sen. Sullivan’s opening remarks at the press conference.
Good afternoon. As everybody here knows, all of the eyes of the world have been on Glasgow with its 400 private jets, the elites of the world converging on this European city, with a lot of the Biden cabinet there.
For 10 months, the Biden administration has been laying out key elements of its climate plan that it was celebrating in Glasgow. Here’s what it is, we've seen it. These are the facts: restricting American energy production, purposely curtailing the building of American energy infrastructure like pipelines, laying off thousands of hard-working Americans in these sectors, and pressuring American financial institutions not to invest in American energy, especially in places like the great state of Alaska. While at the same time, having the President and others beg OPEC adversaries, like Russia and Iran, produce more energy.
In a remarkably short period of time, this Biden Green New Deal plan has had dramatic, negative consequences for working families, particularly in terms of energy prices at the pump, home heating, fuel, natural gas, all of which are spiking as a direct result of these policies. Just as winter is coming.
There is a strong indication, particularly from statements by climate czar Gina McCarthy, that high energy prices for Americans are actually part of their Green New Deal policies so that, as she said, “it can help accelerate the move to renewables around the world.”
Instead of Glasgow, those who care about energy, jobs, environment, and climate issues would have been better to focus more on things going on back home, particularly Virginia and even New Jersey last night, where it has become abundantly clear that the Biden-Kerry Green New Deal policies, embraced by the national Democratic Party, have dramatically lost touch with commonsense approaches to energy and jobs and working Americans and their families.
What we want to do this afternoon is lay out a competing vision, the details of which you can find in this nice handout for all of you to take a look at. A number of us have been working on these issues for months. It is based on facts and data and, importantly, what is already working for our country, not some overnight dystopian reordering of our energy sector and our daily lives. So here are a few areas where our vision contrasts dramatically with the Biden-Kerry Green New Deal, and where we think the vast majority of Americans, whether in Alaska or Texas or Virginia or New Jersey, support the work that we're working on right now.
Our framework is based on American abundance and leveraging America's many unique strengths, especially our world-class natural resources, whose production has actually brought down emissions and the lowest carbon intensive manufacturing in the world. The Biden-Kerry vision is one of planned scarcity, where Americans have to suffer to bring down emissions through higher energy prices. Our vision emphasizes leadership in clean energy innovation and resources, like natural gas, to both expand the use at home and export abroad as a central way to lower global emissions.
The Biden-Kerry Green New Deal vision involves telling our allies, believe it or not, not to buy American natural gas and instead relies on Russia and OPEC and empty promises from authoritarian regimes about their greenhouse gas reductions.
Our vision recognizes that American natural resources can be leveraged to produce millions of jobs in related U.S. manufacturing sectors, including clean technology. The Biden-Kerry Green New Deal will import more technology from China and relies on critical minerals from that country as well.
And finally, and importantly, our vision is focused squarely on the American worker, who has built this country and yet is now denigrated by the Far Left because these Americans continue to produce and mine things like oil, natural gas, and critical minerals, all of which we need and will continue to need for decades.
We don't need multibillion-dollar government slush funds called the Civilian Climate Corps, like the Green New Deal proposes, because America already has hundreds of thousands of heroic workers, like those in the building trades who work hard to produce energy, lower emissions, and enhance our national security.
If you look at the handout we've given you on those who are enthusiastic about the plan and the framework that we put forward, we are particularly proud of some of the comments from some of the top building trade officials in the country. This brings me to my final point.
We believe our vision and framework is mainstream. It's common sense and has the potential to be bipartisan. As I mentioned, just look at the handout of the different groups and elected officials who have previously and presently emphasized support of many of these all-of-the-above energy policy ideas in our framework.
And the reason is clear. It is based on what's already working. Since 2005, the United States has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by almost 15 percent—more than any other major economy in the world. Our plan is based on abundance, not scarcity, prosperity, not gas lines and empty shelves. And, importantly, we believe it is unifying. Unlike the Biden-Kerry Green New Deal plan, it does not pit one group of Americans against another, one region of the country—blue states versus red, energy producing states—against each other. We believe it's the start of an effective, holistic plan that will help move the country forward and it is needed now more than ever.
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