The Biden Obsession With Global Warming Is Doing More Harm Than Good

The latest from the president’s war on fossil fuels: His administration is siding against Native Americans in a crackdown on oil leasing near their indigenous sites.

If you ask President Biden, he will tell you he’s more sympathetic to federal oil leases in the wake of skyrocketing oil prices and the war in Ukraine. He’s said it several times. Yet now comes this story that the Biden administration is siding against Native Americans in a crackdown on oil leasing near their indigenous sites.

Despite heavy opposition from local indigenous leaders, the interior secretary, Deb Haaland, who is of Native American heritage, is expected to finalize a rule banning oil and gas leasing near the Native American historical site of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwestern New Mexico.

In her earlier life, Secretary Haaland was a House member representing New Mexico. In banning oil and gas leasing, Ms. Haaland cited environmental concerns and the “rich cultural legacy” of the region.

Wait a minute, though, the Native Americans themselves are furious. One tribal leader told Fox News Digital that “the oil companies sure aren’t destroying the park, and they have new technology.”

The Navajo Nation president, Jonathan Nez, and vice president, Myron Lizer, wrote a letter last year slamming this proposal. The group opposes the Biden administration’s rule, saying it would prevent them from collecting much-needed royalties on the land they’ve held for decades.

Another Navajo citizen told Fox: “We are very poor. It’s like living in the third world. No help from the government. A lot of us don’t have electricity or running water. I’m for drilling. I’m for drilling.” She added: “People need the money.”

As we’ve argued for almost two years now, the Biden obsession with global warming and the administration’s regulatory war against fossil fuels is doing way more harm than good.

The EPA, DOE, Interior, and the White House are all run by radical climate ideologues. They are exercising a serious form of central planning socialism, and it’s inflicting enormous, high-cost damage on working families of all kinds, including Native Americans. It hasn’t done one thing to deal with global warming, which is emphatically not an immediate existential threat.

A recent Wall Street Journal article notes that the Biden administration has leased out fewer acres for oil and gas drilling offshore and on federal lands than any other administration in its early stages, dating back to Harry Truman.

President Biden’s interior department leased 126,228 acres for drilling through August 20, his first 19 months in office. No other president since Richard Nixon in 1969-70 leased out fewer acres at this stage in his first term.

By the way, as any energy company will tell you, getting a lease does not guarantee any drilling or fracking rights — because these very same climate-obsessive federal agencies will find ways to deny permits, and permits are the key.

Environmental groups tie up permits in the courts. The Biden administration does its part with its crazy overkill rules.

All of which brings me to my last thought: Senator Manchin thinks he’s going to get a permitting reform into the continuing resolution due September 30. Yet all the House lefties oppose this. Even some Senate Democrats, like Senators Markey and Sanders, oppose this.

Meanwhile, Senator Capito of West Virginia and Senator Sullivan of Alaska have a much better approach that would kill red tape, reinstitute regulatory reviews, and not spend a fortune doing it. All 50 Senate Republicans are behind this bill. So we’ll see how it plays out.

When you get your next electricity bill (which is up 16 percent from a year ago) or your natural gas related services bill (which is up 33 percent from a year ago), or see total energy costs that are up 24 percent, you can thank Secretary Haaland and her boss, President Biden.

Because they’re doing everything they can to make your life miserable.

Larry Kudlow was the Director of the National Economic Council under President Trump from 2018-2021. His Fox Business show "Kudlow" airs at 4 p.m &. and his radio show airs on 770 ABC from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

From Larry Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.